A Song For The Past
by frankannestein
Summary: Daina Praeities is a lady knight of Nabradia, adrift in an ever-changing Ivalice. She swears to protect the Lady Ashe, but with the remnants of the Order of Knights of Dalmasca also protecting her, Ashe doesn't seem to need - or want - her help. (Complete - Text Updated 10-12-2013)
1. Murmuring Defile

**Final Fantasy XII in its entirety © Square Enix**

* * *

When the royal city Nabudis and her king fell to the juggernaut that was the Archadian Empire pushing her borders westward, which catapulted Prince Rasler into a king without a kingdom in one apocalyptic explosion of Mist, Daina Praeities, a knight of House Nabradia, was not there.

The reason for her absence began the day she snuck into her parent's room while they slept. From there, she tiptoed with her prize (her father's sword, a length of mythril and damascus steel longer than she and that she was expressly forbidden to touch) to the back yard, drew it, and tried to swing it. Her six-year-old muscles were no match for the blade. Without her quite knowing how, the sword's point tangled with her skirt and the edge opened a long, bloody gash in her thigh.

Her shrieks brought her mother.

"Abyssal celebrant! _Daina_!" Her mother's screams overpowered her own.

Roused by their fuss, her father made his slow, calm way into the yard. He leaned against the doorjamb, one callused hand rubbing his unshaven jaw. Behind the house, the early morning sunlight strengthened until the last stars of night vanished from the sky.

Daina's mother hustled her inside, applied potion to her leg and got her changed, but then Daina made her escape. She left her mother _tsk_ing over the ripped skirt, dashed back outside, and hefted the sword once more.

"Daina, what under jagd do you think you're doing?" shouted her mother.

"Slaying wyrms!" Daina responded with a grunt. The sword overbalanced her and she dropped it, catching herself on her hands, staining her palms and knees grass green. The sword's point buried itself in the lawn. She tugged on the handle, but it was no use; she couldn't budge it. Two hot tears of frustration rolled down her cheeks.

Her father's laughter boomed across the yard, startling a few white doves from their roosts under the eaves. "If she isn't afraid of the blade, there'll be no stopping her, Lizzy," he said to his exasperated wife, and kissed her temple. "She'll just have to learn how to use it."

Lizzy sighed. "A wyrmslayer! It's those stories you tell her before bed, Bertrand. Of what use is a sword to our daughter?"

"It can teach her honor, how to keep her word, and it can teach her to know her own mind," he said seriously. "Finding her calling is not the worst thing in the world. I ask instead, of what use is our daughter to Nabradia?"

With that, he stepped into the yard and joined his daughter. He braced the little girl's wrists, raising the tip of the sword out of the dirt. "Like this, Daina. Think of it as an extension of your arm. Do not fight it. Let the blade be your teacher."

Father and daughter practiced in the yard, he in his military uniform and she in a white dress, her tiny face set and determined as she wielded the sword of a Knight of House Nabradia.

It didn't stop there. Her father took her to the palace and enrolled her in lessons reserved for squires and the sons of knights.

"Whoever heard of a lady knight?" the boys teased.

Daina ignored them. The way of the sword was what her father loved, and she loved him. As her skill grew, so did her reputation, until even Prince Rasler Heios Nabradia and his retainers came to the practices to watch her.

Her mother, Lizzy, submitted more or less gracefully to Daina's strange upbringing, because all was not lost in her eyes. In spite of Daina's scarred hands, and that she wore boy's clothes instead of a lady's gowns, her voice seemed to come from Faram, the Scion of Light himself. Daina spent almost as much time singing as she did in the ring, trading blows with an opponent, sometimes winning, and sometimes losing. She was not the best student in her class, being somewhat headstrong, but she demonstrated considerable skill with her katana, the kotetsu, and she sang for her mother to cheer her.

Daina's childhood was not a peaceful time for the tiny kingdom of Nabradia. Prince Rasler was engaged to marry the Princess Ashelia B'nargin Dalmasca, of the slightly larger kingdom of Dalmasca in the southwest, to unite their lands. Daina had seen for herself how much the two rulers-to-be loved each other. Their affection was a sign of hope in those troubled times.

"Archades grows ever avaricious," Lord Rasler once commented. Daina was then sixteen, and the royal wedding was drawing near. "Emperor Gramis and the sons of Solidor fix their eyes upon us. And on our other flank, Rozarria does the same. War is coming."

"Perhaps the Lady Ashe would like a lady guard," Sir Bertrand suggested. "A lady protector could serve her better than her Knights of the Order."

"Perhaps you are right," Rasler agreed mildly, standing magnificent in his golden armor, the sun striking his platinum hair, and Daina glowed with pride.

So it was done. She knelt before her king and was granted her knighthood. When Rasler wed Ashelia, Daina Praeities bid farewell to her parents and took her place at Lady Ashe's left hand, to be her shield and her sword. She wore a version of the Dalmascan knight's uniform, in white and green, her long white-blonde hair – an even lighter shade than her Lord Prince's – plaited down her back and her kotetsu belted around her waist. Like the Order of Knights, Daina kept her counsel to herself, spoke only when spoken to, and remained always in the shadows, ever watchful. She loved the royal city Rabanastre at first sight, with its desert heat and booming bazaar, although, at night, she missed the cool greenery of her childhood home, Nabradia's royal city Nabudis.

She was not given the time to acclimate to her new position. Within weeks of the wedding, Archadian troops moved into Nabudis and murdered every last soul there, including Lord Rasler's father. In an effort to hold the invading empire at the Nabradia-Dalmasca border, the new king went with Dalmasca's Order of Knights to defend the fortress at Nalbina Town. There he fell, and Nabradia's royal line ended with the shot of a single arrow.

In Rabanastre, Daina observed Lady Ashe mourning her husband. The city of Nabudis, she learned, became a deadland of Mist, the palace a necrohol swarming with unholy monsters, a place not fit for any hume to wander.

The world of Ivalice was changing. Daina watched over her princess, swearing new vows. She would protect Lady Ashe, as she could not protect Lord Rasler, her homeland, or her family.

Her honor and her vows were all she had left.


	2. Trail of Fading Warmth

"We should go, My Lady," Daina said as gently as she could from the balcony door, looking out at the black-veiled form of Ashe. "It isn't safe here."

Her Lady made no reply. Disgusted, Daina retreated into Ashe's rooms, moving silently through the dark, feeling the hot nighttime breeze drifting in from Giza Plains. The people of Dalmasca dressed with many less layers than Daina was used to, but now she understood why. Even with her legs bared between her shorts and the open-toed boots, her stomach bare between her sword belt and the empire-waisted coat, and her arms bare down to the mailed gloves on her hands, she was sweating. The green coat swirled about her feet when she reached the opposite wall and turned around, the ruffled edges fluttering, which she supposed made it more feminine, and it buckled closely around her throat, but still – she wasn't used to showing so much skin.

She shook out her loose hair, which framed her face, and her waist-length braid swung down her back. Sweat collected along the tops of her breasts; the coat bared her cleavage, the way the men's shirts bared a hint of toned chest, a long diamond of skin below their collarbones. She sighed. These Dalmascans and their idea of decent clothing!

Three ladies-in-waiting hovered near the outer door. Daina ignored them as efficiently as the princess was now ignoring her. Her kotetsu hung at her hip, where the green coat wouldn't interfere with drawing it. She was a knight, not a handmaiden. None of the well bred palace ladies owned so much as a dagger.

Perhaps if they had, the kings of Dalmasca and Nabradia would live still.

Ashe was grieving. She'd lost her father, her husband, and was about to lose her kingdom to the Archadian Empire. No one could be trusted. Dalmasca's Captain Ronsenburg was a traitor, the King Slayer, the one responsible for King Raminas's death. According to Marquis Ondore, Lady Ashe's Bhujerban uncle, the ex-knight had been executed.

But that hadn't stopped the Archadian invasion currently flying across the Estersand.

The frighteningly few remaining knights had arrived from Nalbina that night, fleeing before the Imperial sky fleet. Lady Ashe could no longer stay in Rabanastre. They must get her to safety if any hope remained of regaining Dalmasca's independence.

Furiously, Daina swiped at her wet cheeks. The beautiful city of Nabudis was a casualty of war, a footnote in the annals of history. Her kingdom, her countrymen, her father and mother – everybody she knew was dead. Her home, devolved into a haunt for ghouls. Her life belonged to Lady Ashe now, bound as they were by her vows, but Ashe . . .

Daina suspected she wasn't even crying. The princess stood beneath the stars in utter stillness. She seemed to be waiting for something.

The lady knight turned on her heel, kicking angrily at the rug. What could Lady Ashe possibly be waiting for? Everything was ready. With the aid of the marquis and the newborn Resistance (comprised of the fiercest, most loyal sons of Dalmasca), the announcement of _the noble Princess Ashe, who, wrought with grief at her kingdom's defeat, has taken her own life_, would ring through Ivalice by morning, and the real Lady Ashe could disappear. She would assume the name _Amalia_ and gather enough force to reclaim her throne when the time was right. The marquis was poised to aid them in their time underground with money, supplies, and news.

The plan hinged on Ashe's survival. So why was she just standing there, dry eyed and serene, fingering her wedding ring, and that of her Lord that she wore next to it, pretending that Daina's words were the wind shuffling through the sands of the desert?

Taking a deep breath to still her tears and her temper both, Daina approached the balcony for one more attempt. "Please, My Lady. I cannot ensure your safety here. We must go."

"Where would you have me go?" Ashe snapped, speaking directly to Daina for the first time. Her fair hair glimmered through the black mourning veil attached to her crown. In a low, bitter voice, she added, "Nowhere is safe."

Chastised, Daina backed off. She was a protector, not an advisor. If Lady Ashe would not go, then Daina could not make her.

In a dreadful sourness of spirit, she realized that she did not like the princess. But she'd sworn to protect this haughty, distant woman with her life.

And that was what she was going to do, whether Ashe – _Amalia_ – liked it or not.

A ruckus from the hall startled Daina. She rushed to the outer rooms, drawing her sword with the silky hiss of metal on wood, too late to stop the lady-in-waiting who opened the door.

_Foolish wench_! Daina thought. She shoved the girl out of the way and halted the door with her foot, but the light from the hall blinded her. She couldn't see. She leveled the kotetsu at the average man's height, ready to skewer in the throat anyone who tried to enter her Lady's rooms.

"No time for propriety," a deep voice said. The door shuddered, and then slammed into her arm hard enough to break her stance. The bottom edge crushed her bare toes as a tall, broad-shouldered man muscled his way inside, his leather and metal armor jingling. He didn't seem to notice Daina's uniform in the dark, for he then said, "Make sure the Lady's things are prepared."

Daina bit her lips on an ill-natured retort. Instead, she sheathed her kotetsu. "Captain Azelas," she greeted, and then saluted her superior.

She'd recognized his voice. Vossler York Azelas, former friend and colleague of the traitor Captain Basch fon Ronsenburg. He wore his black hair a little long, brushed back from his noble, intelligent face. A greatsword was strapped to his back. He blinked at her. He did not return the salute.

"Vossler."

Lady Ashe – Amalia – had finally deigned to come inside. Her voice was warm with relief, and she removed her veil. Carefully, she placed the crown on a divan. Her clothes were sensible, if overly elegant, for traversing the secret paths through the Garamsythe Waterway, which was how they were to smuggle her out of the palace and Rabanastre.

Azelas went to one knee. "Majesty."

"What word have you?" Ashe-Amalia asked. She was back to ignoring her, Daina noticed.

"We are lost," he told the carpet. "By morning, Archades will occupy the entire city. We must flee. At once."

"Of course," she said, and Daina felt a flare of irritation. Why listen to Captain Azelas, but not to Daina Praeities?

Then, Captain Azelas did a strange thing. He held a mythril sword, just the size for a woman, out to Amalia. And Amalia took it with a familiarity that told Daina the princess knew how to use it.

She gaped at them, her stomach sinking, her vows turning to ash in her mouth.

If Amalia could fight, then what need had she for a lady knight?


	3. Cold Distance

When Captain Azelas escorted the sword-wearing Amalia into the Garamsythe Waterway to rendezvous with the main Resistance force, Daina followed them. There was nothing else to be done.

They went in secret. Amalia's three ladies-in-waiting stayed behind to make sure Lady Ashe had a proper funeral. Downward slipped the Resistance members, seeing no one, speaking to no one. Through darkened palace corridors they stole, through the treasury filled with riches fit for a king but not an exiled princess, and then they descended below the scullery, through an ancient wrought iron gate, and finally, into the gloomy, bricked corridors of the Waterway. The light that illuminated their scared, determined, and grieving faces was faintly blue, the water distinctly green.

A group of twenty marching through standing water and narrow brick tunnels, Daina noted, made a tremendous racket. It couldn't be helped. Four knights only remained of the Order; the rest of the men hailed from the regulars. She drew her kotetsu and slew the dire rats and steelings as they appeared, as the others were doing in front of her. The sewers abounded with hostile life that grew larger the farther they traveled: Horned gigantoads trailing slime, malboro overkings spewing bad breath, and one angry, hairy, triple-jawed baritine croc harried their renegade band. Haunted by ghosts, personal and real, the night passed heavily. Daina grew tired, her mind muzzy. It was slay, listen for pursuit, and slay again, for hours.

She made the mistake of defending herself against a blue and red flying fish with deadly tusks that exploded out of the water in front of her. As soon as her blade sliced into a fin, two more of the hyena-sized creatures appeared, dazzling them with their eerie beauty, and then corkscrewed into a group of bemused troops.

"They're neutral beasties!" a man yelled at her as the knights grimly hacked up the monsters, standing protectively over their wounded comrades. "What did you want to go and provoke them for?"

"What are they?" she asked, less than composed, jolted awake as though she'd missed a charge technick. There was an awful lot of blood turning the water pink.

"Ichthons," the man said, brushing sweaty gray hair out of his eyes. "Where are you from, girl, that you don't know that?"

"Nabudis," she said shortly.

That shut him up. Abashed, he moved away from her, helping to distribute potions to the wounded.

Captain Azelas must have been standing right behind her. He appeared at her shoulder, walking silently, an impressive feat for a man encased in armor. He studied her Nabradian face, her lily-blonde hair and leaf-green eyes, and her kotetsu, dripping with the ichors of beasts.

"You've some skill with that," he said at last, but to Daina's infinite relief, he didn't sound condescending, only curious.

"My father is – was – Sir Bertrand Praeities, a Knight of House Nabradia. It was he who taught me," she said. It hurt to talk of her father, and she busied herself with cleaning off the kotetsu and sheathing it. Three tassels hung from the sheath, two green for King Raminas and Lady Ashe, and one yellow, for Lord Rasler. The yellow tassel set her apart among the Knights of the Order, as if her gender wouldn't do that already, but she was proud of it. Proud to be here by Prince Rasler's wish, and proud to defend her Lady.

A Lady who seemed to hate her very existence.

Tears stung her eyes. Never in her life had she felt so unwanted and out of place. Back home in Nabudis, the boys may have teased her, but they accepted her. She was a knight.

So why did she feel lower than a scullion?

"I knew Bertrand." Now Azelas sounded surprised. "Forgive me, but you don't look much like him. Except your eyes."

She said nothing, because he didn't seem to expect a response. She had not met Captain Azelas before this night, but she knew of him. He was thirty-six, the same age as her father, and a legendary knight.

Basch fon Ronsenburg had been legendary also. Now, the kingslayer's betrayal was epic.

Azelas cocked his head. "You are the one brought to serve Amalia."

"Yes."

"Nabudis's ill fate does not seem to be your own. Tell me, Praeities, with whom does your allegiance lie?"

"I belong to Dalmasca," she said instantly, but she was confused by the question. Of course she belonged to Dalmasca. Even before an Archadian judge magister led the assault against her home and wiped it clean of all humes, she had sworn her vows and joined Prince Rasler in Rabanastre.

"I see." Without acknowledging her confusion, he slung the greatsword over his shoulder, slipping it into its waiting harness. "Come with me."

Puzzled, she fell into a march behind him. As far as women went, she was taller than average, and could keep pace with him easily. Her feet squished unpleasantly through the murky water – even the pretty green coat was damp and bedraggled, slapping at her ankles – but she made no complaints. She wouldn't be wet forever. They planned to exit the city into the vast Estersand (via the Westersand and then Giza Plains to the south), to creep beneath the Empire's radar, "lost" to the sandstorms but still able to gather news by way of the travelers that sought shelter with the nomadic camps. The merciless sun of the desert would more than make up for her discomfort now.

The Resistance members looked up at them as they passed. Captain Azelas was clearly their leader, but Daina was something new. For every other man that scowled disapprovingly at her, one smiled in a hopeful way. Her cheeks grew warm, and she kept her eyes on the captain. At sixteen, she was not in the habit of seeking male company in the way those shy, admiring smiles invited.

Daina wanted love. However, she was aware that she wasn't the perfectly bred gentlewoman. The novels she read always told of a knight sweeping a maid off her feet. The lady knight figured that her destiny lay in some poor nomad boy, to be dazzled by her courtesy and strong sword arm.

Unintentionally, she gave a small snort of laughter. She covered the sound with a particularly loud splash, grinning. If she ever fell in love, she doubted it would be with anyone not superior to her, and that was asking for a lot.

"I've brought her, My Lady," Azelas said, jerking Daina out of her thoughts.

Amalia stood on a shelf above the water, holding hushed counsel with five of her men. She looked up.

Gray eyes met green. Amalia's narrowed. And not in a good way.


	4. Walk of Torn Illusion

"What do you mean by this, Vossler?" Amalia asked in her imperious, low-pitched voice. She crossed her arms over her stomach, her hands cupping her elbows.

Because her Lady was facing her, Daina went to one knee, her hands resting on her thighs. Azelas didn't say anything, but Daina heard Amalia's release of breath, and then the ex-princess said, "Leave us."

After the other men left, Amalia turned again to Azelas and said in a weary way, "Well?"

"I would like her to remain by your side at all times," he said in his quick, no-nonsense way. "She can see to your needs better than my men can."

"I do not wish it," Amalia said. From under her hair, Daina watched Amalia's feet march away, heard the rap of her boots against brick. Daina's hands curled into fists.

"I alone will keep Your Majesty safe, if _that_ is what you wish," he said, his voice loud in the confined space. It sounded like a threat. Daina goggled at her fists, glad no one could see her surprise. He dared speak to Amalia in such an angry tone? Or was this what it meant to serve royalty, to know when to push the boundaries of their words and birth?

Amalia's boots hesitated. Turned.

"Vossler," she breathed. Then, more crisply, "Very well. I will do as you ask."

"We move!" Like his speech, his movements were sparse, wasting no unnecessary energy.

Daina waited until Amalia passed her before she stood without using her hands. She took her proper place behind her Lady, a lethal shadow, gratitude for Azelas's intervention warm in her chest.

That warmth carried her through the labyrinthine Waterway. They emerged in Storehouse 5 of Rabanastre's Lowtown. Fortunately, the threat of occupation kept most of Lowtown's inhabitants behind closed doors on this night. A Rabanastre hume named Balzac met them at the egress, and here the numbers of the Resistance swelled with more than soldiers: A quartet of moogles offered Captain Azelas their mechanical services, a pair of thickset seeqs snorted and grunted out a few words in their native language that Daina couldn't understand and then hunkered down at the end of their procession, and a handful of proud, shirtless bangaa came forward with crates and chests of supplies on their muscular shoulders, some wearing blindfolds over their tiny, reptilian eyes. Thus fortified, the Resistance snuck out of the royal city through the gargantuan Westgate.

And not a moment too soon. Daina heard the telltale hum of Imperial air cutter remoras and looked up as a wave of the small hovercraft whooshed by overhead, their glossair rings glowing with eldritch blue light, heading for the Aerodrome. The appearance of the remoras heralded the final moments of Dalmasca's independence.

"They have no reason to search for us," Captain Azelas said from the darkness ahead, stilling the nervous whispers that sounded like a herd of chocobos rustling their feathers. "We have the advantage. When the time is right, we will give them reason, but not tonight. Tonight, we move on."

Move they did. Weariness dragged at Daina by the time the sun reached its zenith. Her head ached from the constant glare, her ankles ached from carrying her through the burning sands that dissolved beneath her feet, and her heart ached as hour upon hour passed without conversation, and memories of her lost home and parents gnawed at it.

She began to sing to herself. Softly at first, ballads of which her mother had been fond. But then, as she continued to cut down red wolves and fat cockatrices, feral sleipnirs and squawking urstrixes, her voice gained confidence and she sang battle hymns that suited the exercise. The men of the Resistance took heart from the voice that drifted so sweetly over them, marching with renewed purpose and strength, in turn sweeping Daina along with them.

So inured to her own singing was she that she didn't realize she might be doing something wrong. She jumped from song to song, choosing without thought. She broke off only when Amalia abruptly stopped walking and stared at her, her face blank with shock.

Captain Azelas also stopped when he noticed Amalia was no longer at his side.

Daina swiftly knelt. She should never stand in front of Amalia. She should never speak unless spoken to. Why, oh why had she started _singing_ at a time like this?

After a thoughtful pause, Azelas called a break, and the column of marchers broke up, pooling among the boulders and spindly trees to soak in the precious shade.

He strode up to Daina and offered her a canteen, thrusting it low into her line of vision. She took it and drank gratefully, feeling the water ease the wasteland of her throat. She shouldn't have been singing while walking through the desert. That was stupid. Another mistake.

When Azelas spoke, his voice was regretful. "Soon enough, Ivalice will forget the sound of a Nabradian hymn. We welcome your songs, Praeities."

Daina's fingers clenched on the canteen, spilling some of the precious water, unmindful of Azelas's courtesy. _Not as long as I live_, she thought fiercely. _Archadia can't take my heritage from me_!

Someone called for the captain then, and he left the two young women alone. The bustle of the men didn't touch them where Amalia stood and Daina knelt, unmoving.

"Rasler used to sing that song," Amalia finally said.

Startled, Daina looked up, and received another shock as she saw the ex-princess in the sunlight, close enough to touch and horribly vulnerable, and remembered that Amalia was only a year older than she was.

"The things you do," Amalia went on, as if speaking to herself, or reading a book aloud, "the way you say things. You remind me of him. And I . . . I don't want the reminder."

Amalia sat down, not as if she meant to, but rather as if her legs had turned to flan. The mythril sword landed with a puff in the sand. She put her face in her hands.

At last, the arrogant princess was crying. Her slender body shook with noiseless sobs.

Daina felt her own grief well up. Then it receded and compassion took its place. Who was she to judge a future queen, to whom appearance was everything? Without her façade of granite, Amalia's people would have no confidence in her.

Daina shifted her body, kneeling in a way that would hide the weeping Amalia from the Resistance. It was a start. For now, she would do what she could, and perhaps, just perhaps, her vows would hold some meaning with her Lady.


	5. Warrior's Wash

"Rozarria was the reason for the attack on Nabudis," Daina said flatly. "My vote does not lie with involving them."

She stood inside a domed lodge tent, which belonged to Dantro and his wife, a pair of nomads, in the Estersand's South Bank Village on the Nebra River. The village was silent this morning, the inhabitants still sleeping in their round stone homes. Amalia sat on a cushion at a low table. Captain Vossler Azelas and Daina stood before her, and high ranking Resistance members knelt or sat scattered around the rest of the tent. Sunshine turned the white canvas walls to gold, making everything inside seem filmed with honey.

Amalia regarded the communiqué again.

"The Empire is aware of us," began Balzac.

"As they could not help but be," Vossler put in, a wry smile pulling at his lips, "since we have scarce given them a chance to breathe for the past two years. We have severed communication lines throughout Dalmasca and supply routes at every turn, freeing the villages."

"This isn't an isolated village," Balzac went on stubbornly. "We're talking about liberating the royal city. Why can't we request help from the Rozarrian Empire? They have cause to hate the Archadian Empire as we do."

"But not necessarily love for Dalmasca," Daina said, her impatience growing. "We allow them within our borders to drive away House Solidor's grasping vines, perhaps permanently remove Emperor Gramis's son Vayne, and then what? Rozarria goes home empty handed? Use your head. We do this not for the present, but for the future."

"Get your own head together," he retorted. "Methinks it resides too much in the past."

They glared at each other. It was always the same. Once, Balzac had wooed her, the poor Dalmascan boy she had prophesied for herself, but they really had nothing in common. While she lived by her knight's honor, he had no scruples about wanton violence – his best friend was a fire-red bangaa, after all. Their interaction had downgraded quickly from love notes to heated arguments and neither one had yet called a cease fire.

But . . . maybe he was right. Perhaps the scars of the past were corrupting her vision. Daina crossed her arms tightly under her breasts and began pacing in front of the table, her boots making no noise on the threadbare rug.

The late king of Nabradia, Prince Rasler's father, fearing the military might of the Archadian Empire, had made treaty with the large city-state in the west, Rozarria, to place troops from that land in the tree roads of the Salikawood, which abutted Phon Coast, which in turn formed the border between Nabradia and Archadia. Emperor Gramis had not liked this covert display of power, and exerted political pressure on the small kingdom. Yet his neighbors in Nabradia did not accede to his demands. The emperor and his senate had not liked this defiance, either. Thus, the Empire had invaded, and several days later a Mist explosion had razed the royal city of Nabudis.

Had her father died fighting, or had the Mist stolen him away unawares? Daina shut her eyes and lowered her head, allowing her shoulder-length hair to hide her face, while the movement of her feet stilled her temper.

"It has been a full two years. The time to strike is now. I, too, vote for stealth over force." Vossler seemed, like always, impervious to their bickering. His arms were also crossed, but more in thought than anger. "Vayne Solidor lives up to his name. Vanity puts him at risk." He gestured at the communiqué, while Amalia laced her fingers, rested her elbows on the table, and hid her mouth behind her hands. "Tonight, after Vayne takes up the office of Consul-Governor in Rabanastre, he plans to hold a fete at the palace. We go to –"

"Crash the party," Balzac said with relish.

"– infiltrate the palace," Vossler finished with a frown that made Balzac scratch the back of his head sheepishly, "and assassinate the good Consul."

"But Rozarria –"

"Balzac." Daina looked him in the eye. "This operation's secrecy is of utmost importance. We do not have _time_. We take a small force to the palace, and once there, we strike. As quick as a wildsnake bite. Tonight. During the fete. _While their guard is down_. We will get no other opportunity."

"But –"

"I must reclaim my throne," Amalia said. Everyone in the tent snapped to attention. She looked up, her eyes burnished in the light. "Once I have reinstated myself as queen, I can declare Dalmasca's independence. After, there will be time to request help, should we require it. Until then, we must focus on dislodging Vayne Solidor from Rabanastre. He is a great warlord, the best Archadia has to offer. His threat is paramount."

"Agreed?" Vossler asked, as if anyone would dare go against Amalia.

"Agreed!" shouted the renegade war council.

"Our next step, then, is to decide who goes and who stays," Daina said.

Vossler nodded and began barking out assignments.

Later, Amalia's task force gathered outside of Rabanastre's Westgate, the same gate she had fled from two years earlier. Six squads slipped into the city during the Consul's inaugural speech, of which it seemed most of the population had abandoned homes and stores to hear. Lowtown had been locked down, but with a few slit throats and Resistance soldiers in the Empire's armor, they gained access to the Garamsythe Waterway without incident.

Amalia looked around, sword in hand, as she followed Vossler along a now-familiar route toward the Northern Sluiceway, and she caught Daina's eye. The two young women smiled at each other, partly a grin of friendship and partly a grimace of determination.

Daina regretted ever feeling dislike toward Amalia. True, she was still haughty and arrogant, lacking a discernible sense of humor, but she had grown into herself, and at nineteen, she was an assured, intelligent, charismatic, straightforward woman. And an alluring one at that, in her red boots with the tops rolled down, golden greaves that clasped shapely thighs, and the microscopic, hot pink skirt that made Daina's shorts seem modest. Daina snickered to herself. Would Vayne enjoy a death dealt by such beauty?

They had grown used to each other, slightly more than knight-servant and princess now. Daina's professional relationship with Vossler had improved also. They three held confidences not shared with the rest of the Resistance, she and Vossler keeping Amalia safe through her indefinite exile, trusting no one but each other.

Vossler halted around a corner, and Daina sank into a waiting crouch behind him, shielding her Lady. Then Vossler relaxed.

An unseen soldier said, "Squads three through six are in place. They stand ready. So far the Imperials haven't noticed a thing."

"Then go now and hurry the others," Vossler said. "By nightfall, we must ensure all our men are in place."


	6. The Switchback

The fete opened the palace to the sweltering Dalmascan night, the assembly glittering in ceremonial armor and jewels, flowers and perfume scenting the air, champagne and wine flowing as freely as the water in the fountains. Couples waltzed to the music of an orchestra, as beautiful and as neutral as the ichthons of the sewers, Dalmascans and Archadians hiding their tusks behind their smiles. It would only take one sword swing to end this false peace, for the assembly to leap into violent action that would purge the palace of all Imperials.

There he was. Vayne Carudas Solidor, the eldest living son of Emperor Gramis Gana Solidor, and the new Consul-Governor of Dalmasca. He stood on one of the many balconies overlooking the Garden Stairs, smiling – somewhat unsuccessfully, Daina thought, for his eyes remained as cold and as sharp as those of a vulture – and bowing to the ladies introduced to him, shaking the hands of the men. His dark fall of hair blended with the night sky, and he wore armor green as wyrmscale, the gold trappings fashioned all over in a style like steeling's wings. Daina crept forward with Amalia at her side, Vossler on the opposite end of the room with several other Resistance soldiers, closing the jaws of their coup d'état on the unsuspecting Consul.

Vayne, clasping his white-gloved hands behind his back, looked over the balcony railing. This time, his smile was true. And cruel.

Shouts exploded from the Garden Stairs, metal clashing, feet pounding: The sounds of fighting, where two squads of the Resistance had taken up watch. Vayne turned his back on the night, his gaze sweeping the ballroom.

His eyes picked out Daina, and Amalia next to her, and Daina felt a shock as tangible as a blast of thundaga magick.

Because he knew. She could see it in his face. _Vayne knew_.

_A gun_, she thought wildly. Why didn't she have a gun, or a crossbow? _Someone, please, shoot him now_!

Vayne's right hand rose.

Daina hurled herself backward, colliding with Amalia and nearly impaling herself on her Lady's drawn sword, and both women crashed to the floor in a tangle of arms and legs. Amalia swore in surprise and fury, pinned beneath the taller Daina. The marble wall above their heads burst outward in a shower of flakes and dust, bullets embedding themselves there. Following that, a tremendous boom that made Daina's ears hurt rode in on a fiery wave, knocking most of the dancers flat.

The blast from the sky set the gardens on fire. The night went from blue-black to a hellish orange.

Daina scrambled to her feet, just in time to meet the downward slash of an enemy sword. She parried it easily and thrust her kotetsu between the chinks of the Imperial's plate armor. As he gurgled behind his helm, sagging over her blade, she looked frantically around for Amalia, saw her fending off two Imperial swordsmen, her escutcheon on her arm, saw also the airship – the _Ifrit_ – which was making short work of their comrades outside. The protective paling didn't seem to be active. Of Vossler, she saw nothing.

Despair turned into the berserker high of battle. Amalia. _She must protect Amalia_.

She yanked her kotetsu out of the dying swordsman and kicked him to the floor. She slew one of the swordsmen harassing her Lady, while Amalia dropped the other, but more were flooding out of the very walls. If they didn't move, _now_, they would be surrounded and either killed or captured.

"Retreat!" she shrieked, just in case any of their friends remained alive to obey.

"We can still do this!" Amalia shouted. Agony tore her expression apart, her elegant features twisting as their assassination attempt disintegrated around them.

"It's no use!" Daina yelled. Both women ducked from incoming attacks. "It was a trap, My Lady! We must flee!"

After a few minutes of frenzied fighting, Amalia gave in, and with Daina and a trio of bleeding Resistance soldiers, they cut a path through their enemies, back the way they had come. _The Waterway_ – they would lose their pursuers in the Waterway. It had sheltered them twice before, and three times lucky . . . As soon as their route was clear, the five of them raced down the palace corridors. They lost one man to an Imperial marksman along the way.

Daina's breath whistled through her teeth, and she could almost _feel_ snipers draw beads between her shoulder blades, and the burn in her lungs matched the burn in her arms from blocking and executing attacks. She was tiring, but Amalia seemed driven by something deep in her core, and it was she who set the pace as they clattered down the damp steps into the Garamsythe Waterway.

At the bottom of the steps, they splashed into the cold, green water, and the crack of a gunshot made Daina's heart stop; a second Resistance soldier collapsed, dead.

"No!" Amalia screamed.

Daina shoved her, and Amalia stumbled out of the line of fire. "Go!" Daina commanded, brandishing her kotetsu. "Go, we'll hold them here!"

Amalia's expression was scary. Tears filled Daina's eyes. She couldn't bear to have her Lady angry with her, and to send Amalia away, when they hadn't been apart in two years, could very well be the death of her. "You must survive!" she cried. "Please!"

A second gunshot took their last man. Amalia and Daina stared at his half submerged corpse, and then Amalia's lips tightened. She ran.

Tears streaking down her face, Daina grasped her kotetsu in both hands and charged up the stairs, removing the marksman's head from his shoulders in a clean sweep. Below, Amalia vanished in the gloom. Daina kept going, returning to the palace, where her ferocity with the blade drew all pursuit after her. Her supply of potions dwindled until there were none left. She hoped she'd discover Vossler somewhere, for his aid and salvation. She'd have been ecstatic to find _any_ friendly face, even Balzac's, and he was no proper soldier.

But the only friends she encountered were already dead.

Amalia herself had said it: _He is a great warlord, the best Archadia has to offer_.

Vayne had baited his trap well.


	7. Path of the Firstfall

Running water, rushing across brick. A cauldron's bubble of noise, as of waterfalls. Somewhere close. Daina headed for that, following her ears.

She blinked, but it did no good. Her vision remained tinged with red, turning the tunnels and gates of the Waterway foggy and indistinct. More than once, she walked headlong into something solid.

_I'm dying_, she thought. She felt oddly calm about it. It was a fact. As was the fact that she was alone, with no way to restore her health. The red burgeoned, stealing across her eyes, but death had not yet claimed her. She held her hope close to her heart, and her kotetsu in her hand, and she staggered onward.

The squeaks of rats and bats kept the kotetsu seeking their furry, fetid bodies. She took care to boot their carcasses into the water to avoid leaving a trail, but with her red-misted vision she couldn't be sure of how effective her caution was.

Each time she heard Imperials she wedged herself in tight, dark spaces, or crouched in ankle-deep water. They were still looking for the dregs of the Resistance. Dying or not, she could not afford capture.

Although she could no longer fight, she was alive. Amalia must be alive, too, and free, else Vayne would not have his hounds searching so arduously through the sewers.

Heartened by this thought, she continued. But when she passed a pair of serene ichthons plying through the humid air, she paused, eyeing them suspiciously. Hadn't she passed these monstrous fish before? At least they left her alone, unlike the bothersome dire rats, or the swooping steelings. She slumped against a wall. It was hopeless. She was going in circles. She could neither find her way to Lowtown, nor find her Lady. Vossler, she never expected to see again. He had been on the wrong end of the ballroom, too far from the safety of the Waterway, too close to Vayne's fangs.

Balzac. That crafty Lowtown hume would have the brains to get the survivors to safety, to take up their roles as obedient citizens of the Empire. As soon as the _Ifrit_ opened fire, he would have acted.

Amalia. How could she have sent the princess out alone?

What kind of knight was she?

Dimly, Daina realized her thoughts were wandering, disconnected and incoherent. She blinked again, rubbing her eyes. The red was laced with black now. Or was it white?

The fog seemed to have gained life of its own. Like something real, rather than a trick of her dying mind. It thickened like steam from a boiler.

It was hot like steam.

She'd reached the Overflow Cloaca and the exit to the Waterway. Wheezing, she stumbled into the long, rectangular room, and the gate clanged shut behind her. Across the room, another gate burst open and several sets of feet stampeded through it. Vague shapes. Two humes, a man and a boy. Someone much taller – a woman – her head seemed to reach the ceiling, grotesquely elongated. Daina brought the kotetsu to bear, and she swayed on her feet.

A third hume, a girl in white, gold, and hot pink.

The kotetsu clattered to the bricks, slipping from nerveless fingers.

_Amalia_.

She must have spoken her longing aloud, because the freakishly tall woman and the boy both looked her way, their faces indistinct, their postures startled, and Amalia made a sound of relief – and then shouted a warning.

The Mist erupted, for that was what the strange fog was: Pure, concentrated magickal power and superheated water. A fireball blasted into the Cloaca and morphed into an equine of flame and fury.

One kick from the Mist beast was all it took, and Daina fell.

* * *

"Stand where you are!"

The tuft of phoenix down crumbled into ash on her lips. Surprised, Daina opened her eyes and found herself supported in the lap of the most gorgeous woman she'd ever seen. The strangely elongated woman, she realized, was not malformed, because she wasn't a hume. Large rabbit-like ears grew from silver hair, and Daina felt her claw-hard nails as the viera helped her stand.

Daina, feeling sick, looked around. The fiery equine was gone, either killed or fled, but row upon row of Imperial marksmen surrounded their little band from the walkways above the Cloaca, guns trained on them in dizzying uniformity.

The man who had spoken came forward into the light. Vulture eyes and cold smile. Vayne.

Fury radiated off Amalia, and she started forward, but the hume man grabbed her arm. "Now is not the time," he said in a pleasantly deep voice, burred with an Archadian accent. He wore a noble's clothes, not a suit of armor, fantastically out of place in the dank sewer.

Who was he, and why was he here? Daina, horrified that anyone should touch the princess, started forward also, but the viera stopped her with a meaningful look.

Amalia quivered where she stood, glaring with all of her righteous hatred at Vayne. She seemed to have completely forgotten about Daina's existence. Daina, weaponless and disoriented after her raising, deflated.

The soldiers flooded into the Cloaca, disarming and cuffing them all, the sexy viera, the handsome hume man, the teenage boy, elegant Amalia, and mute Daina, and then forced them up the steps into Lowtown. Daina searched the crowds from behind her curtain of hair, but she saw no one she knew. These people were not part of the Resistance, and they spoke among themselves as the soldiers marched her past.

"They're the thieves who stole into the palace."

"Is that what the commotion last night was about?"

Accusing eyes, unveiled curiosity. Superior smirks.

"They think me some common thief," Amalia said disgustedly.

The Archadian man raised an eyebrow at her. "Better than a common assassin."

Daina gaped at him. How much did he know? Before she could say anything, an Imperial shoved Amalia in the back, and like a spring wound too tightly, she whipped around and snapped at him, "These people have done nothing. Release them."

Not once did her gray eyes turn to Daina. It was as if they were strangers.

"What are you doing?" the boy asked her. He was Dalmascan, judging by his blond hair and clothing, loose trousers cinched with a red sash around his waist, no shirt, and a short vest. He wore silver greaves and mailed gloves.

"Don't interrupt me. I'm thinking." Amalia didn't look at him, either.

Vayne did, though, with an expression like a scientist examining a dissected worm, as he walked by. The residents of Lowtown fell back before the Consul with awe and respect.

Daina said nothing. Amalia's attitude suggested that her service to Amalia had come to an end. She had failed.


	8. The Black Watch

"Wait!" screamed a girl from the crowd. The Imperials held out their arms, holding her back, but she continued to throw her small, compact body forward, straining toward the prisoners. At any moment, Daina expected, she was going to burst into tears. "He didn't know what he was doing! You have to let him go! You have to!"

"Penelo!" The boy smiled sadly, waving his cuffed hands. "Sorry. That dinner'll have to wait."

The blonde girl shook her head miserably. "I told you!"

"That's enough!" one of the soldiers barked. He punched the boy in the back of the head with a metal clad fist.

_No honor_! Daina thought. She dropped to one knee beneath the dazed boy, bracing herself, and managed to keep him from sprawling across the ground. In her peripheral vision, she saw Penelo break through the soldiers.

"Leave him alone!" she cried, darting into the mix.

And then the handsome man stepped forward, as smoothly as a dancer entering the set, and offered a white handkerchief to the hysterical girl, looking as comfortable as though he, too, wasn't wearing cuffs. "Hold onto this for me, would you?" he asked easily, and cocked his head. "Just until I bring Vaan back."

Penelo accepted the token, but the anxiety didn't leave her face.

"On your feet!" the offending Imperial snarled, grabbing the unresponsive Vaan by the scruff of the neck. Daina did her best to prop him up until the subsequent jostling knocked them apart. The soldier pointed at the Archadian hume. "You, over here!"

The other man shrugged. "All right, all right. Edgy, aren't we?"

He sauntered over, the viera woman close by him, her eyes seeing everything, her ears hearing all, her thoughts a mystery.

When Daina attempted to follow Amalia, the soldiers prevented her. A scuffle ensued, and, panicked, Daina called after Amalia, but her Lady never turned around. The Imperials hustled the ex-princess into one ship, while Daina and the others were herded into another. Daina briefly contemplated bulldozing her way through, as Penelo had, but one glimpse of Amalia's stony face dissuaded her.

During all this, Vaan lost consciousness. The soldiers manhandled him into the ship, leaving him heaped on the floor of a holding cell, totally disregarding the seats, but the hume and the viera didn't seem particularly fussed about this bad treatment of their comrade. Odd.

Daina sat, waiting until the door closed, and then she rounded on the hume. "Who are you?"

"Oh, she speaks," he said in mock surprise, taking the seat across from her and resting his cuffed hands in his lap. "I was beginning to think you were naught but a wallflower."

"Funny." Unsmiling, she looked him up and down. Honey brown hair, short and spiky, heavy masculine earrings in both ears, a silky white shirt and gold-and-black waistcoat, black trousers that he probably had to peel off at night, colorful rings on several fingers. He was as flamboyant as the viera, who wore tailored black armor that left little of her mocha-toned skin to the imagination.

He smirked. "Balthier, at your service, Insurgent. This is Fran. You are – let me guess. Somebody's poor relation?"

The Imperials called the Resistance the _Insurgence_. So, he had guessed. "Daina Praeities. And him?" Daina indicated Vaan.

"A thief with bad timing."

"Are you sure that isn't your story?" she asked, inspired. She was guessing too, now, piecing together the details from their mannerisms and attire and what she'd heard from the people in Lowtown. "I never thought to see sky pirates in the sewers."

His expression told her she had gotten close to the truth.

"She sees to the heart of things," Fran said archly, earning herself a grimace from her partner. The viera's words were thick and unfamiliarly accented, the cadence off, and Daina had to give her full attention to them to glean their meaning.

With a hum and a rumble, the room tilted; they had launched. Fran lifted her head as if scenting the air. "Where do they take us?"

Daina knew much of the workings of the Archadian army, and she answered, "Nalbina." She frowned, thinking hard.

At Nalbina Town, Prince Rasler lost his life, and, later, Captain Basch fon Ronsenburg slew King Raminas and handed Dalmasca over to the Archadian Empire. A terrible place, Nalbina, one she had no wish to see. Plus, if Vayne suspected who Amalia truly was, he would not take her Lady there, but to Archades. She had to rescue Amalia. Whether Amalia wanted her help or not.

A wry smile pulled at one corner of her mouth. Déjà vu.

"Nalbina? It's not even a proper dungeon. They just sealed off the bottom level of the fortress," Balthier scoffed. He sighed and leaned back, closing his eyes. "I suggest we get some rest. We're not going anywhere for a while."

He was right, of course. Daina wished she could relax, but she kept glancing at Vaan, lying so still on the floor. At least he hadn't started vomiting, so he wasn't concussed. She shook her own head. Although the tuft of phoenix down had revived her, it hadn't healed all of her wounds; she felt disoriented and sick. The Empire planned to lock her in Nalbina, to bury her alive. She had to rescue Amalia. She couldn't _think_. She rubbed her temple, pinched the bridge of her nose, hoped she wasn't going to get airsick. Maybe . . . She studied the sky pirates.

Fran caught her eye, but there was no time for talk. They had arrived at Nalbina. After the Imperials dropped them into their makeshift dungeon, sand-filled rooms open to the blazing Dalmascan sun, with nothing but a single water pouch to share between them, Balthier liberated them from their handcuffs with a few clever twists of a set of lock picks. Carefully, he laid Vaan, who looked to be merely sleeping, in the shade of some rubble.

From deep within the dungeon, a scream rose in pitch until it became a wail – a sound of intense pain tearing from a tortured throat. It tapered off, and a second, lower voice sought the chinks in the walls, ululating on one long, drawn out lungful of scorched air. Daina grimaced. Down here, only the criminals roamed, without even cells to separate them. Down here, it was dominate or die. Die, as the bangaa half buried in the sand had done. They had water. Others would come looking for it.

The viera's hand descended on Daina's shoulder, and the rest of her injuries healed. Cure magick.

"Thank you," she said shyly.

"Come," Fran said. "We will find our way out."

"I'm counting on you," Balthier said as he sat on a chunk of masonry, stretching out his long legs. He nodded at the prone, insensate Vaan. "He is too. Try not to keep us waiting, ladies, hmm?"


	9. Station of Banishment

Two years after the battle that had claimed Rasler's life and Dalmasca's freedom, Archadia was still restoring Nalbina Town, and the fortress was a ruin. Daina followed the leggy viera deeper into the fortress's underbelly, sometimes at a crisp walk, other times slowly, while Fran put her long-fingered hand to the crumbling walls and lifted her head in that queer sniffing motion. Daina felt utterly useless. No kotetsu. No Lady to protect. And no idea how to get out. She brooded, not really paying attention to Fran's activities, trying to understand how she had come to be here in the company of criminals.

However, every story had two sides. Eventually, she found her voice. "What were you doing at the palace?"

"Sky pirates seek treasure," Fran answered, amused. "We sought a stone, but another beat us to it. You sought something else, I think."

"Yes." Daina looked at her toes. "I found only heartache."

"Our situations are much the same." Fran crouched, her eyes tracing something Daina couldn't see along the ground, and then she stood, shaking back her long ponytail. "You can trust him."

Daina frowned. "Trust who?"

But Fran didn't answer. She darted into a small, lightless room. Daina turned to face the crowd of curious fellow prisoners that had begun tailing them, humes and bangaas and seeqs, all beaten and gaunt. Under her stare, for she was fit, strong, and healthy and they were not, they dispersed.

From the depths of the room, Fran made a sound of satisfaction, or dismay.

"What is it?" Daina asked, peering into the dark.

"A solution and a problem." Fran reappeared, striding briskly back the way they had come. Daina struggled to keep up. To her surprise, Fran made an abrupt turn and headed toward a pit in the center of the fortress, slinking silently along in the manner of a panther.

The reached the edge of the pit, and Fran put her hand on her hip. Daina peered around her and saw Vaan, his cheek bloodied, and Balthier, both trapped inside the pit, backs to the gate, their eyes trained skyward. Three seeqs lay insensate in the yellow sand.

"Great," Balthier muttered. "They just don't give up, do they? Now is looking like a good time for us to leave."

As Fran coaxed the gate to soundlessly rise a foot or so off the ground, Daina also looked up, expecting more bellicose seeqs. A swarthy bangaa and several Imperial soldiers marched in instead, peering into the pit. Balthier and Vaan, pressed against the wall below them, were hidden from their view.

Fran wasted no time with pleasantries. "Through the oubliette," she whispered, "there's a way out. Only . . ."

"Only you sense the Mist." Balthier put his hands on his narrow hips. "Then we'll need weapons."

Above them, a soldier barked, "What did you call me? Say that again!"

"What, you couldn't hear?" sneered a heavily accented voice: The green-skinned bangaa. His lower jaw was pierced, as were his floppy ears, with hoops of gold and silver. "I merely said that the lot of you are incompetent fools. If you've the sky pirate in your hands, where is he?"

"You'd have done better, Ba'Gamnan? By your own words, it was the Imperial army who caught this sky pirate of yours. We've done your job for you! We don't require the assistance of filthy headhunters. The Empire will restore order here."

"Eh? What's that you say now? Maybe I'll whet my blade on you, before I kill Balthier."

Daina turned to Fran, whose silver eyebrows were creased with worry. Quickly, the humes squeezed under the gate.

"That's enough, Ba'Gamnan." This voice sounded muffled and strangely metallic. Like Vaan, Daina leaned into the gate to get a better view of the speaker, a man clad head to foot in expensive plate armor, complete with a flowing black cape. They couldn't see his face behind his helm.

"A judge," Fran said with distaste.

Daina's heart contracted. A judge magister, like the one who had unleashed the Mist on Nabudis. Her enemy.

"Judge?" Vaan asked.

It was Balthier who answered, with a _humph_. "The self-proclaimed guardians of law and order in Archadia. They're the elite guard of House Solidor. Which effectively makes them the commanders of the Imperial army. If you ask me, they're more executioners than judges. Not a friendly lot, at any rate. What are they doing here?" He pronounced the last bit in an undertone.

"The emperor is willing to overlook race for his more talented servants," the judge said. "However, those that do not show respect will receive none in kind."

Ba'Gamnan interjected with, "Your Honor," but the judge inexorably continued: "You travel freely through our lands because the emperor wills it. Am I correct?"

"Bah!" Ba'Gamnan threw up his hands and stepped aside.

The judge turned to the lead soldier, who saluted him. "Where is the captain?"

"We have him in solitary, Your Honor. We're ready to begin our interrogation."

Daina gasped. The captain? Had Vossler been captured? Was it possible he was still alive?

In a last attempt to bring the spotlight back to himself, Ba'Gamnan started to speak, but the judge dismissively said, "This does not concern you, bounty hunter."

"He is in here somewhere! Find him!" Ba'Gamnan spat at three other bangaa, and they disappeared, squabbling like children.

The judge and his entourage went the other way, and Balthier cocked an eyebrow.

"Time for the hare to follow the fox," he commented.

"Huh?" Vaan muttered, and Daina felt a spear of sympathy. She didn't understand anything going on, either. _Trust him_, Fran had said. Trust who? Vaan, a clueless thief, or Balthier, who apparently had a bounty on his head?

Why had she ever let Amalia out of her sight?

"The magicks binding the door to the oubliette are quite strong," Fran said to her partner. "Too strong even for my talents."

"That's why we'll get them to open it for us." The pair moved off, like parents, leaving the children – Vaan and Daina – to trot along in their wake.

Vaan objected. "How is going deeper into this place –"

"What's wrong?" Balthier asked over his shoulder. "You don't trust her? Viera's noses are sharp. If she says there's a way out, there's a way out."

When Fran looked impassively at Vaan, the boy lowered his eyes. Balthier kept going. "There are more turnkeys than cutpurses down here. I've had my fill of chains. Let's tread lightly, shall we?"

They tailed the judge and his soldiers through a previously locked door, which then slammed shut behind Daina, sealing them in. Due to her sharp nose, or simple powers of observation, Fran found the Confiscatory where their weapons had been stashed – all but Daina's kotetsu, which seemed to have been lost in the Garamsythe Waterway. Vaan outfitted himself with a sword; Fran a bow; Balthier a gun. Daina sifted through the spoils and found another katana, an osafune, in good condition. The osafune was two grips longer than her old kotetsu, but after a few practice swings, she decided it would do and buckled it around her waist.

Incongruously, the kotetsu's empty sheath was there. She picked it up and removed one of the green tassels, the one for Lady Ashe, and attached it to the hilt of the osafune. With regret, she left Lord Rasler's yellow tassel in the Confiscatory, an offering to his lost life.

The quartet moved deeper into the dungeon, following the judge and his entourage. Heading, Daina noted, for the lightless room that held Fran's solution and problem.


	10. Central Junction

While they hid in the inky shadows, two Imperial magi chanted out a spell and the magicks in the door responded, glowing white, blue, and violet, curling like vines. The judge and his company strode through the unlocked door, and so did Daina and the others from a safe distance, slipping through before the spell refreshed itself and sealed them inside. The oubliette was blacker still, a forsaken place. None of the Imperials bothered to turn around, just as none of the other prisoners had followed their example. Perhaps there had been demonstrations of potential escapees in the past.

Daina stole a glance at Vaan. "How did you end up here?" she whispered.

He screwed up his nose. "I didn't mean to."

"I don't think any of us did," she said, grinning.

"Penelo told me it was like the Empire was swallowing Rabanastre whole. It isn't the same city we used to know," he offered. Then he scuffed the floor with a shoe, sighed again, and continued. "I wanted to take back what's ours. Give back to Dalmasca. I figured, if I found something good in the palace, and it fetched a good price, I'd buy them all dinner."

"Them?"

He gave her a clear-eyed look. "The war orphans."

"I see." This was what she and Resistance were working so hard to undo – children resorting to thievery to survive, children growing up without parents, Dalmasca forgetting its culture as the Empire took over. Vaan, in his clumsy simplicity, represented everything evil about Dalmasca's defeat.

"Anyway, Penelo must be worried sick." Vaan tenderly scrubbed the back of his head and the cockatrice egg sure to be there.

"Penelo?"

"She's a friend." His smile was warm. "After my parents died of the plague, hers took me in, but then they were killed in the war. It's been me and Penelo ever since."

No wonder the girl had been so frantic, then.

"Quiet back there," Balthier admonished, and they fell silent. The judge's entourage vanished down a set of steps, and Daina crept forward to peer over the landing with Vaan (who apparently now considered _her_ a friend, too) at her side.

Below them, a crow's cage hung from a thick chain above a pitch black hole that seemed to go down forever. Inside the cage, arms chained above his head, a collar of metal that restricted all movement bruising bare shoulders, another such collar around his waist, from which chains depended to secure his ankles, an untamed thatch of curling, wheat gold hair and beard obscuring his face –

"You have grown very thin, Basch. Less than a shadow. Less than a man," the judge said, removing his helm. All Daina could see was the back of his close-shorn head, also wheat gold.

Vaan audibly gasped when the imprisoned man looked up, and so did Daina.

Not Captain Vossler York Azelas, as she had first thought, but Captain Basch fon Ronsenburg. The traitor. The one who was supposed to be two years dead.

"Sentenced to death and yet you live," the judge went on, speaking Daina's thought aloud. "Why?"

Basch spoke, his voice rough and tired. "To silence Ondore. How many times must I say it?"

"Is that all?" The judge's words could have rusted iron.

"Why not ask Vayne himself?" Basch stopped to take a breath, difficult because of the way his arms were chained, which put pressure on his ribcage in all the wrong places. "Is he not one of your masters?"

"We've caught a leader of the Insurgence," the judge said casually. "She is being brought from Rabanastre. The woman Amalia. Who could that be?"

Daina dug her fingers into the stone railing of the landing to keep from speaking. Basch seemed to spark at the mention of Amalia, but then the energy bled out of him, and he lowered his head once more. The judge put his helm back in place.

"Such a faithful hound to cling so to a fallen kingdom."

"Better than throwing it away."

"Throwing it away?" the judge snarled. "As you threw away our homeland?"

With that, the judge and his soldiers left by another route, leaving the imprisoned traitor alone with his guilt once more. Daina, breathing as hard as if she'd just run the entire distance from Rabanastre to Nalbina Town, her eyes locked on his bowed head, didn't realize that the others had left her there on the landing, approaching the crow's cage and the hole under it.

Fran's stiletto heels clacked on stone, and Basch's roughened voice called, "Who's there?"

Completely ignoring him, Balthier put one foot on the ledge and peered into the chasm yawning below the cage. "This is the place?"

"The Mist is flowing through this room," Fran affirmed. "It must be going somewhere."

"You!" For the first time, Basch showed real signs of life, and jerked against his bonds. "You're no Imperials. Please, you must get me out –"

"It's against my policy to speak with the dead," Balthier interrupted, frowning. "Especially when they happen to be kingslayers."

"I did not kill him," Basch said unblinkingly.

Balthier's sarcasm sharpened. "Is that so? Glad to hear it."

"Please, get me out. For the sake of Dalmasca."

At that, Vaan flew into a rage. Taking two tremendous strides, he sailed across the gap and clung to Basch's cage the way a dive talon stuck to its prey. "_Dalmasca_?" he bellowed, shaking the bars as if to tear them apart like an eggshell to reach the meat inside. Basch jounced in his chains, a stick figure grimacing in pain. "What do you care about Dalmasca? Everything that's happened is because of you! Everyone that's died, every single one!"

"Vaan!" Appalled, Daina dashed down the stairs and took the leap herself. The cage rocked wildly under their momentum while she tried to pry his hands loose. "Stop it!"

He seemed beyond hearing her, beyond reason. "Even my brother," he raged, "_you killed my brother_!"

"Quiet!" Balthier hissed. "The guards will hear."

Vaan paid him no heed, but Fran took action. "I'm dropping it," she announced, and with a well-placed swing of one strong leg, she threw a lever. The cage jolted, sickeningly, shocking all words out of Vaan. He grabbed Daina, eyes wide.

"Pirates without a sky," Balthier lamented. Swiftly, he mimicked Fran's jump and braced Daina against the cage with his arms, and with a rattle that billowed into a chainsaw snarl, they plummeted.


	11. Walk of Revelation

"It's not the fall I mind," Daina muttered, lying on her back while she waited for the universe to settle. "It's the sudden stop at the end."

"Are you all right?" Fran asked quietly.

Daina allowed Fran to help her sit up, and she put a hand to her head. The brobdingnagian crash that had torn down a good section of their surroundings resounded in her skull, making her eyes and her stomach roll. Some knight she was lately. Her father would be ashamed. So she lied. "Yes."

The wreckage of the crow's cage littered the floor of their landing place: The Barheim Passage, if she remembered the land's layout. Once, its railways had been the main supply route into Nalbina, but had been largely abandoned at the onset of air travel. The Resistance had camped in its disused halls before.

Gloomy tunnel walls stretched in either direction, terminating in darkness. Basch, freed, rubbed bruised and bleeding wrists, his ribs showing clearly beneath his skin. And then a blond blur streaked in front of him; Vaan tackled the older man to the ground and raised his fist to strike, but Balthier snatched the back of Vaan's vest and flung him backward. Vaan tumbled onto his rear end, gaping at the sky pirate.

"Spare us your quiddities," Balthier sighed.

"Yeah, but – but he's a –"

"A traitor, I know. Stay here and fight, if you want." Balthier's impatience showed in every line of his body. He turned to Basch, who was getting slowly, and painfully, to his bare feet. "If you can walk, let's go."

"You're taking him with us?" Vaan spluttered.

"We could use another sword arm."

"And you have it," Basch said. His accent baffled Daina, a mixture of Dalmascan and something she couldn't quite put her finger on, until she remembered her history. Basch fon Ronsenburg was not a native of Dalmasca. His homeland, the one the judge had accused him of throwing away, had been the small republic of Landis, overtaken by the Empire sometime before her birth.

Fran's words floated through her mind: _Our situations are much the same_.

Basch's eyes flicked over them, one by one, as if in thanks. He paused when he got to Daina, and she averted her own eyes. She wasn't sure she liked Balthier's decision, either, but . . . seeing Basch like that distressed her more. Purple and red discolorations bloomed across his shoulders and waist, the bloody streak of an untreated scar sliced through his left eyebrow. He'd been through much, this man, and they couldn't abandon him. Did he know her? It had only been a few weeks between her arrival in Rabanastre and his betrayal, but he might have seen her. She sneaked a peek, and a glint of silver caught her eye – a pendant shaped like a phoenix, strung up by its feet around his neck, as if a goose plucked and waiting for the broiler. A symbol of his supposed death?

Somebody sure had a warped sense of humor.

They unearthed a bangaa merchant in The Lightworks, who ruefully informed them that their dramatic arrival had blocked the only exit from the Barheim Passage of which he knew. He sold them supplies and a jury-rigged fuse to get the lights turned on, and sent them on their way.

"The Mist seethes," Fran said presently.

"It reeks," Balthier agreed. "Something's close."

Daina and Vaan huddled together, both of them dirt-smudged and tired, weapons drawn. Many and varied were the beasties in Barheim, and they did not like intruders disrupting their underground home.

Basch espied a fallen soldier nearby. He picked up the man's sword and swung it around. His brows pinched, and the practice swings gained more control. Daina understood that expression all too well. She'd seen it on her father's face, and felt it on her own, enough times. Once a knight, always a knight.

"Nice moves there, Captain," Balthier drawled.

"You mean 'traitor,' " Vaan spat.

Balthier leaned against the wall, crossing his arms. "So they say. But I didn't see him kill anyone."

Vaan's words fell like stones. "My brother did."

At that, Basch froze in the act of buckling some of the more serviceable pieces of the corpse's armor about his person and stared at Vaan, who glowered back, his features clearly lit.

"Reks," Basch said in recognition, seeing someone else in Vaan's face. His arms dropped limply. "He said he had a brother two years younger. I see. He meant you." He paused. "Your brother. What became –"

"He's dead," Vaan snapped.

"I'm sorry," Basch murmured.

Disbelief swarmed over Vaan's face and he yelled, "It was you who killed him!"

"I give you my word," the ex-knight said earnestly, "that was not the way of it."

Gingerly seating himself, he told a story of the events of two years ago, in so compelling a way that Daina could almost see them for herself. The fortress at Nalbina. Basch making his way to the king's room, to stop the treaty signing. Once there, Archadian soldiers surrounding him. King Raminas, already dead. Basch fighting, but it's no use, and two of the enemy hold him, force him to kneel with his arms pinned, hidden behind a screen. A second Basch (whose real name was Noah fon Ronsenburg, the very judge they'd followed into the oubliette) stands in the light by Reks, talking to him, filling his ears with poison as he fills the boy's gut with steel.

Daina covered her ears with her hands, as if she could shut out the images in her mind.

"A twin brother?" Balthier's tone was that of a man amused by the antics of a street mummer. "Fancy that. But still, the pieces fit. I'll give you that much. And he did look like you."

"I don't believe you," Vaan said flatly.

Basch sounded downright ancient when he said, "Of course not. It was my fault that Reks was there. I am sorry."

"My brother," Vaan said, "he trusted you. He trusted you, and he lost everything. How can I believe you?"

"Not me then," Basch answered. "Believe in your brother. He was a fine soldier. He fought to the last to protect his homeland." He paused again. "No. Surely he fought to protect his brother."

"You don't know anything!" Vaan cried.

Daina reached out, touched his shoulder, but he turned angrily away from her.

"Believe what you want to. Whatever it takes to make you happy," Balthier put in icily, and then he walked off. "What's done is done."


	12. Withering Shores

The seething Mist led them straight into a mimic queen's nest.

The mimics they had seen so far, jointed metallic creatures that, when folded up, resembled treasure coffers, were nothing when compared to their mother. She reared up on her many legs, nearly filling the room, her quivering abdomen lit from within like stained glass, blue, purple, red, and orange. She stomped around in fury, aiming to squish the flesh and blood creatures that had disturbed her. In the struggle, Daina lost sight of Balthier and Fran, but an arrow whizzed by her and embedded itself with a satisfying _thump_ in the queen's thorax, so at least one of them had survived the initial onslaught. The mimic screeched with a sound like metal tearing, or lightning ripping the sky. Her new-hatched babies scurried about the room, feeding on the power conduits. The lights flickered dangerously.

"Get rid of those!" she yelled at Vaan, pointing at the tiny batteries. He went after them willingly, slicing their bodies apart. Shot rang off them too, so Balthier had understood the threat they posed. The lights stabilized.

Daina grasped the osafune in both hands and charged beneath the queen's stamping legs to hack at her belly. Basch, she noted, was doing the same, and for several minutes the two of them worked in grim tandem to bring the monster down. The queen did not bleed, but their blades sparked in rainbow bursts with each hit, draining her glow. When she fell, her enormous carapace smashing through the wall and starting a cave in that sent them all running for their lives, Basch ran beside Daina.

They barrelled into searing sunlight.

Panting, Daina leaned over and braced her hands on her knees, watching drops of her sweat hit the sand and immediately disappear. Judging by the shortness of her shadow, it was close to noon. She'd been awake for over thirty-six hours.

She closed her eyes, waiting for her heart to slow. She'd been separated from Amalia for twelve of those hours. She prayed that her Lady was safe.

"To think Dalmascan air could taste so sweet," Basch said, and Daina started. She hadn't realized he was so near. Disconcerted, for she hadn't yet resolved to believe his story, she straightened and walked toward Fran. She could go on pretending he didn't exist.

But it wasn't that easy. Not with the way his eyes kept following her. She ducked her head, allowing her hair to cover her face. He didn't turn away like other people, just kept staring at whatever he wanted. Had his time in solitary unhinged his mind?

"Where are we?" Vaan asked.

"The Estersand, by the look of it," Balthier said. "Let's back to Rabanastre before we shrivel up. By your leave, Captain."

Basch's voice again, rough and low, and so gentle it made Daina shiver. He didn't sound insane. "Yes, the hour of my return is already over late. The people may hate me, but that does not free me of my charge."

_Your charge_? Daina nearly choked on her tongue. The others were already walking off, eager to return to the relative safety of the royal city. She said nothing, but all the while her heart smoldered in her chest. She understood him. His charge as a Knight of the Order was to protect Amalia.

But the Order was gone, and that was _her_ charge. She wouldn't relinquish it to a dead man.

It all came crashing down on her then. She had escaped Nalbina, but now what? She was no closer to Amalia than she had been before. And now this! Her priority was to seek out the Resistance, if there was a Resistance left after Vayne's ambush. She would also have to deliver Basch to them. Dispirited, she lagged behind the others, so that when she finally caught up to them at the Eastgate, they were preparing to go their separate ways.

"I thank you," Basch said with frank sincerity.

Balthier cocked his head. "I'd avoid crowds, if I were you. In this town you're still a traitor, you know."

"The Resistance will surely find me soon." He turned to Vaan. "Fates will we meet again. I would pay my respects to your brother."

Vaan made no reply, his face unsure. Balthier pointed at the boy.

"You're a fugitive now, too," he warned. "Stay low for a while."

Daina, however, was in no mood for one of Balthier's lectures. She jogged after the retreating form of Basch, his bright hair easily visible amid the more flaxen locks of the natives. "Wait!"

He stopped. Faced her, reluctantly it seemed, the wind teasing his unruly golden curls. He was still barefoot, and for some stupid reason, it upset her.

"Come with me," she sighed. "We can offer a bath, a change of clothes, and food."

His eyes darted to the osafune and the green tassel swinging from the pommel. "Am I to take it that the Resistance has already found me?"

"Yes," she said curtly. She didn't want to talk to him anymore. His voice did weird things to her, making her feel anxious and disconnected from the real world. She spun on her heel and marched off, heading for the nearest entrance to Lowtown. She'd feel a lot safer underground, away from the curiosity that rippled through the crowds around them, which seemed to be aroused by Basch's appearance. He could have been a murdering barbarian, or just an escaped convict. She was sure she looked no better by this point.

How had everything gone so horribly wrong?

"I underestimated him," she muttered.

"Whom?" he asked at her shoulder. She may have been tall for a woman, but he was still taller, with a longer stride.

She sighed, aggravated. "Vayne and his traps. You blundered into one, and so did I. I do _not_ intend to make that mistake again."

"You are the one from Nabradia, Praeities's daughter." It wasn't a question. "Amalia –"

She glared at him. Her eyes were exactly on level with his mouth. "Don't say it," she snapped. "I will have to report to the others, anyway, and you can hear it then. It's too dangerous here."

"Aye," he murmured, making her shiver like a wet cat.

She almost burst into tears of relief when she saw Balzac perched on a crate in the North Sprawl outside of one of the Resistance's hideouts, his baggy trousers and turban the soothing, peaceful color of the sky. For his part, he looked ready to leap off the crate and embrace her, but then he saw Basch and his eyes about fell out of his head. Daina rushed up to him and planted both palms against his chest, demanding his attention.

"Balzac," she said urgently, "time is of utmost importance. What of Vossler?"

"The captain's inside," he said dazedly, shaking his head. He pressed his hand against hers, holding them near his heart. "We thought you lost."

"So did I," she murmured, and pulled her hands back.


	13. Ward of Velitation

_A nap_, Daina thought, ticking things off her mental list. _A bath, clean clothes. Now, food_. Once she had been debriefed by her captain, Daina's participation in the meeting was no longer required. She took her bowl and cup to the table near Vossler's elbow, taking strength from his solid, unflappable presence, and listened to the heated discussion taking place.

The decimated Resistance had been hit hard, but Basch's rise from the dead seemed to breathe a sort of frenzied life into the remaining men. Except for Vossler, who stood with his arms crossed and his lips sealed.

"Then what of Ondore's proclamation?" one man shouted, referring to the fact that Basch should have been executed two years ago. "Did they fool even the marquis?"

Daina chewed slowly, thinking. What of Ondore's other proclamation, that Princess Ashelia had committed suicide? She knew that was a lie, a necessary one. What could have possessed the marquis to lie about Captain Ronsenburg?

"What if a judge killed the king, not the captain?" his neighbor put in. "That would explain everything, wouldn't it?"

"Then the captain would be brother to a judge! How are we to trust such a man?"

Right then, Basch appeared from the back rooms, silencing them all.

Daina froze with her spoon halfway to the emptied bowl.

He wore cannibalized parts of a sainikah's uniform: Open-heeled boots, linen shorts, and a red and brown vest, its buckles undone. Beneath that, a linen shirt, only the bottom button closed. A piece of armor was strapped to his left shoulder, the strap checkered yellow, pink, blue, and green, the colors of Dalmasca's royalty, and mailed, fingerless gloves on his hands. He looked so much healthier, fed and clean, his bare arms and the vertical line of chest and stomach visible below the shirt showing off his physique and warm skin tone. Golden, like his curling hair, trimmed to his shoulders and combed off his face, exposing the scar that not only disrupted his eyebrow but also bit deep into his left ear. Some attack in the past had nearly severed the lobe.

"Now there is the Basch that I remember," Vossler remarked, jerking Daina out of her reverie. Her spoon clattered onto the table.

"Then will you fight again at my side?" Basch asked.

Daina stared into her bowl in horror. Why had the sight of Basch discomposed her so? She'd seen men before. In all manner of dress and undress. She and Amalia had been the only women in the Resistance camp; Balzac didn't _own_ a shirt. She'd also already seen Basch's upper body, although – she winced. She didn't want to think about that bruised and bloody shape in the crow's cage.

Someone slammed both hands on the table, which made her quickly stand in case the table became an accessory in the war of escalation, and then the hume shouted, "His word alone convinces me of nothing!"

Basch looked at her. Biting her lips, she shook her head. She would not give her word in his favor. Not yet. The non-judgmental understanding in his eyes stole her breath.

"I'd take his word over that of a mouthpiece marquis!" came the call from the other end of the room.

"Then you name Reks liar with him," a third man said levelly.

A minor tidal wave burst into the room in the form of Vaan. He looked ready to take every man on, a short teenager clutching a sheathed sword that was too big for him and spitting fire. "My brother was no liar!"

"Just the opposite," Basch said softly. "Reks was the witness they needed. They had to make it appear as if I'd killed the king. Reks bears no blame. The Fates have willed it."

Vossler strode over to the boy, said, "So this is Reks's brother," and wrenched the sword out of his hands. Dismissing Vaan's bewildered and hurt expression, he rounded on Basch. "Your words may convince this child, but they weigh too lightly on the scales for my taste. Our paths will remain separate."

Basch's eyes narrowed. "Do you not think Amalia worth saving?"

"I hold men's lives in my hands," Vossler said after a slight hesitation. "I must see foes in every shadow. The night we moved against Vayne, he knew. I will not chance such disadvantage again. I must treat you as I would Ondore – as I would treat any abettor of the Empire."

"Then what will you do? Hold me here in chains?" Basch challenged.

The two men stared at each other, one dark night to the other's sunny day, both sporting the same thin beard and goatee. Once, they had been best friends, but apparently that was not enough to convince Vossler of Basch's innocence. The tension in the air was thick enough to touch, but then Vossler tossed the sword and the other caught it.

"Some things never change. Do they." Once again, this was not a question, and Basch sounded regretful.

"Listen to me, Basch," Vossler said in his quick, clipped way. "Your cage may have no bars, but it is a cage. The eyes of the Resistance watch unblinking."

"Let them watch. I know something of cages." Basch swept out, and after a wary scan of the room, Vaan followed him.

At last, Daina found her voice.

"Vossler –"

"Daina." He gripped her shoulder. "Go with him. I need you to be my eyes."

"I – what?" Dumbstruck, she scrambled for words. "Amalia – we must rescue her – That's why I'm here –"

"No," he said, and now he had her by both shoulders. "There is much to be done here. You can best serve Amalia by watching him."

And that was how she found herself outside the hideout, hurrying past Balzac, to shadow a man she would rather never see again.

"That's right," Vaan was saying. "Amalia's in the Resistance."

"Then you know her." Basch's face closed, shuttered like an abandoned house.

Vaan laced his fingers across the back of his head. "Sort of. We met just before we got sent to Nalbina." He paused. "I've known nicer people."

Daina couldn't help it; she burst out laughing. Somehow, after everything that had happened, that was the funniest thing she'd ever heard. "Truth be told, so have I," she admitted, and both men turned around.


	14. The Chosen Path

They'd gotten a smile out of Basch. "Our paths keep crossing, yours and mine," he said to Vaan. "It's more than coincidence."

"It's annoying."

"I'm sorry. Allow me one last annoyance: A favor to ask."

Vaan and Daina looked at him, and then at each other. Daina shrugged.

"I want you to take me to Balthier," Basch explained. "Even caged birds need wings."

Vaan looked at the ceiling, pacing away from them, and Daina followed him. After a moment, so did Basch. Lowtown, which originally had been built as storage for the city before war turned it into a haven for the poor and homeless, bustled with activity. Vaan seemed comfortable down there, despite the gloom and stale air. _Of course he would be_, Daina admonished herself. Even orphans needed places to sleep.

"This makes us even," he decided, walking backward.

Puzzled, the ex-knight frowned. "Even?"

"For Nalbina. We couldn't have done it without you," Vaan explained simply.

Daina grinned. She liked Vaan. Had he been a year or so older, the Resistance would have recruited him. Well, she was Resistance, wasn't she? She held out her fist. "Vaan, you're such a hero!"

"Of course I am!" He laughed and bumped his fist into hers.

"So. You know Rabanastre better than I do." She spread her hands. "Where would a tired and thirsty sky pirate go?"

"The Sandsea." He blinked as her meaning sank in. "Wait! You're coming too?"

"I'm under orders," she said, rolling her eyes toward Basch, who said nothing.

This was just fine with her. She and Vaan kept the conversation going. He asked her how _she_ had ended up arrested with them, and his eyes got bigger and bigger as she related the tale (leaving out everything that had to do with who Amalia really was). Daina absently stroked the green tassel as she spoke. Amalia. Being apart from her Lady like this, it hurt. But Vaan's company loosened something else in her. She hadn't spoken this much in one shot, ever. As a lady knight, she had to weigh each word carefully, to hold her thoughts to herself unless Amalia or Vossler requested them. Vaan made it easy to laugh.

The Sandsea, Rabanastre's busiest pub. Beside the patio, a pack of children playing a game caught Basch's attention.

Vaan saw him looking. "A lot of kids lost their parents in the war."

"I am sorry," Basch said.

"You don't have to keep apologizing," Vaan sighed. Then, surprising both knights, he added, "Really, it's all right. I know it wasn't your fault. I see that now. You didn't kill my brother. It was the Empire. My brother trusted you."

He reached for the door to the Sandsea and pulled it to. "And he was right." Without waiting for them, he went inside.

A smile danced around Basch's mouth when he tilted his face to the sun. The Sword of the Order was belted around his hips, and a green tassel dangled from the opposite loop. He still wore the phoenix pendant, silver against his skin, but it hung the right way up, its head and wings stretching for the heavens.

Daina unconsciously adopted Amalia's usual pose, crossing her arms over her bare midriff and cupping her elbows in her hands.

"Shall we go in?" she asked quietly.

He nodded, and they entered the pub.

After the sunlight outdoors, it took a few moments for her eyes to adjust to the dim, smoky atmosphere inside, but Vaan hadn't gone far. It was loud and crowded in the pub, and Tomaj's ale and wine crossed the bar in great quantities. They searched through the faces of the patrons, and then Vaan pointed to the balcony. Fran's long silver-and-black ears were clearly visible up there.

He took the stairs two at a time, but stopped so suddenly that Daina collided with him. Balthier and Fran sat at a table with a magicite light in the middle, Balthier with crossed arms, Fran with her cheek on her fist, talking to a stooped, blue-skinned bangaa, his ears floppy, his reptilian snout white-bristled with age.

"As I said, a misunderstanding." That was Balthier. He sounded angry.

"Misunderstanding?" the old bangaa repeated disbelievingly, waving his thick arms. "What I am understanding is they took Penelo because of you!"

"What?" Vaan rushed over to the bangaa. "What about Penelo?"

"Oh, Vaan!" The bangaa whipped around, bushy white eyebrows giving him a hume expression of petulance; an incongruity. "They've taken Penelo! And there was a note – a note for this Balthier! 'Come to Lhusu Mines,' it said."

Fran straightened. "It's Ba'Gamnan. He was in Nalbina."

"If anything were to happen to that sweet child," the bangaa went querulously on. "Why, I've her parents' memory to consider! You're going to her aid, and that's that! It's what you sky pirates do, isn't it?"

"I don't respond well to orders," Balthier said, unsmiling. "You do know that the Imperial fleet is massing at Bhujerba?"

"Fine, then I'll go!" Vaan cried. "You at least have an airship, don't you? Just get me there, and I'll find Penelo myself."

Basch stepped forward. "I'll join you. I have some business there as well."

"An audience with the marquis, by chance?" Balthier smirked.

Daina narrowed her eyes at Basch. So. He meant to aid Amalia, starting with her uncle, Marquis Halim Ondore IV. Not a bad plan, she supposed.

Then Vaan pulled something out of his sash, an uncut orange crystal about the size of a halved head of cabbage. "Balthier, just take us and this is yours."

"The gods are toying with us," Fran grumbled, crossing her long legs.

Daina assumed the crystal was the stone the pirates had sought, and Vaan the one who got to it first. Balthier groaned and stood up, Fran right behind him.

"Bhujerba's on the sky continent of Dorstonis, and the magicite mine we're looking for is in Bhujerba. If we're to save the girl, we start there. You ready to leave?"

"I'm ready," Vaan said in a tone that implied that it didn't matter if anybody else was or not, they were going. Daina couldn't blame him. That innocent blonde girl, in the hands of headhunters – it was unthinkable. But how had Ba'Gamnan known of Penelo? Unless . . . Daina had a flash of memory, which showed her Balthier, handing Penelo his handkerchief. Ba'Gamnan must have seen it also and come back for her, thinking her of some importance to the sky pirate.

Balthier turned his gaze skyward and sighed. "Seems I took on more baggage in Rabanastre than I'd planned . . . Well, let's save your girl and be done with it. Come on."


	15. Trail of SkyFlung Stone

"This Ba'Gamnan," Basch said. "Who is he?"

"I don't really know," Daina admitted.

Balthier spoke to a receptionist at the private airships counter in the Aerodrome. She pointed toward a hangar gate and Balthier waved them to follow. Vaan trotted between the hume sky pirate and his viera partner, excitedly firing off questions about his airship almost faster than Balthier could answer them.

"I saw him in Nalbina, speaking to the judge," Daina finished.

"Gabranth," Basch said wearily. "The judge goes by Gabranth."

She cast him a sidelong glance, but simply said, "Our sky pirate comes complete with a price on his head."

"Regretful," he said. "But still, he is help we sorely need."

"To rescue Amalia?"

He turned the full force of his gaze on her, and she tensed, as if readying herself for a fight. His amber eyes weren't nearly as gentle as his voice. "Yes. I thank you for your service these two years past. It must have been hard for you, after losing your home."

"My home is with Her Highness," she said frostily, "not in Nabudis."

_We are not similar_, she was thinking. _You ran from the Empire when you lost your home, and made Dalmasca yours, but you weren't here when Dalmasca needed you. I was. I am not like you_.

He must have read some of her thoughts in her face, for he withdrew again. Unhappy. Alone.

Balthier's ship, the _Strahl_, was a magnificent construction painted white, purple, and gold. In the cockpit, he and Fran slid into seats.

"How flies Bhujerba?" Basch queried.

"Oh, she's as free as can be, for now." Balthier took the controls. "The Empire took notice when they announced the princess's suicide and your untimely execution."

"If it becomes known that I'm alive, the marquis will lose their favor."

Balthier wasn't listening. His manner bristled like the fur on a cornered mastiff. "I try to steer clear of such things. Right. It's time to fly. And no wagging tongues or you're like to bite them off."

"I'm coming, Penelo," Vaan murmured, taking a seat and staring out of the windscreen.

Apparently, they were all alone. Divided, each with his or her agenda. Daina chose another seat and buckled herself in, trying to be interested in the view beyond the portal as the airship rose from the hangar. They soared through a turquoise sky, diamantine clouds, and topaz sunlight. In the west, the blue darkened to indigo, creeping across the heavens, for night was nigh. Sunset was a truly magnificent sight, as viewed from above. Only once before had she ridden the sky, when Prince Rasler took her to Rabanastre. But her heart wasn't quiet. Bereft of everyone she knew, she hugged herself, and the discontent in the cockpit threatened to smother her.

Eventually, Vaan's curiosity got the better of his mouth and he inserted himself between Balthier and Fran again, peppering the pair with questions. Fran's amusement was contagious, and Balthier thawed enough to boast of the work he'd personally put into the airship, _after_ he'd stolen it from a shipyard in Archades, of course.

Daina wasn't interested in the ship. As soon as the _Strahl_ leveled out for its long cruise to Dorstonis, she got up and walked out of the cockpit.

She wandered the ship's corridors. There weren't many, nor were they long. She discovered an aft lounge, which offered cushioned chairs, lap blankets, and a table bolted to the floor. Delighted, she opened a panel in the bulkhead and discovered a music player, complete with a boxed collection of recorded music crystals. These, she waded through, marveling at the eclectic taste of the owner (most likely Balthier), chose a compilation of familiar instrumental songs, and started the player.

Sitting by herself in the lounge, curled up under a blanket with the osafune resting against her chair, Daina sang along with the music.

Drowsiness engulfed her. The compilation came to an end, and then started over. She fell silent.

"Breathtaking," said a rough, low voice behind her, and Daina sat up so fast her head spun. Basch stood in the doorway – the one that, she realized, she'd neglected to close. "That brand of beauty is enough to move a man to tears, or to war. May I join you?"

"As it pleases you," she said, pulling the blanket closer. She didn't want his compliments. Once a knight, always a knight. She was not a girl to be flattered into good humor.

Exhaustion dragged at every inch of his frame as he settled into a chair on the opposite side of the table.

"Are you all right?" she asked.

He stayed silent for so long she thought he might not have heard her, but then he said, "I do not sleep well. Too many thoughts argue for my attention, too many memories. Faces I shall not see again. Choices that can never be unchosen."

Daina's eyes dropped. She felt bad for the way she'd acted in the Aerodrome. Her dislike was childish, and uncalled for, now that she had actually met the man behind the legend. Behind the lies.

"I seem to be always requesting something," he said presently.

Despite herself, she smiled thinly. "As of yet, you have not asked the unreasonable."

He hesitated. "Would that you sing more, I might be able to rest without dreams."

Daina thought about it, decided the request was harmless enough. So she sang, weaving lullabies through the instrumental music drifting out of the speakers, until he slept. So still, so deeply. The kind of sleep she doubted he'd had in over two years. Daina draped a blanket over him and he didn't twitch an eyelash.

Up close, she could see the faint lines at the corners of his eyes. Lines earned from a lifetime of squinting in the Dalmascan sun.

Or from laughing.

She lightly touched the backs of her fingers to his cheekbone. Once, he must have been happy.

What else would the Empire take from them before House Solidor was satisfied?


	16. Simoon Bluff

"_Ow_!"

Daina and Vaan lurched apart. They'd tried to look out of the same portal and cracked heads.

"Is your skull made of rock? Go find your own window," Daina complained, shoving him away.

He resisted, pushing back. "Just move over a little."

"Settle down, children," Balthier said.

Daina suspected he was laughing in the pilot's seat and made a rude gesture at his back that she'd picked up from Balzac. Vaan snorted. But then the view drew them both close to the glass again, heads pressed together, staring in awe at the skycity of Bhujerba. The land seemed striped with lush, green trees and fluffy white cloud, and the morning sun shone from _below_ the landmass. The _Strahl_ moved in low and fast, easily swerving around towering magicite formations, shaped like ginormous chocobo tail feathers in the shimmering lavender-blue color of glacial ice. The city itself clung to the floating continent, which was kept aloft by the magicite, crystals imbued with Mist, its buildings conforming to the natural hills and valleys of purvama.

In spite of Dorstonis's tropical coordinates, it was a cold place. Daina stepped down the gangplank in the Aerodrome, standing aside for the team of moogles, their pompons bobbing at her knee level, who were already heading for Balthier to offer services on the airship, their little paws holding wrenches and other tools. She took a deep breath and vertigo swept over her; the air was so thin at this altitude.

Several Imperial soldiers marched past, and Basch made a sound low in his throat.

"Easy," Balthier cautioned, sauntering by as if he hadn't a care in the world, drawing them all after him.

Basch nodded. He seemed to be ignoring Daina today. She couldn't decide if this annoyed her or relieved her, and she sped up to walk with Fran.

"No good," one of the soldiers said. "He's not here. Keep searching!"

They saluted each other and clanked off.

"You're a dead man. Don't forget it," Balthier said out of the corner of his mouth. "And no names."

"Of course," said Basch.

They strolled out of the Aerodrome and across a massive bridge, the center of which was lined with grates that allowed tourists to stare down at the ocean so many miles below. Even at this early hour, the bridge was busy with foot traffic. It was said that if anyone fell from the city, they would wash up on some faraway shore, still alive.

"The Lhusu Mines are just up ahead," Balthier went on. "Though, I do hear there's not much left there these days."

A young voice intruded. "You're on your way to the mines? Then, please, allow me to accompany you. I've an errand to attend there."

Daina and Fran, in front, turned around in surprise as a black-haired Archadian boy, perhaps twelve years old, hopped off the bridge railing and approached them fearlessly. Some noble's child, apparently alone, and wearing exquisite clothing in white, gold, and dark green, topped with a precocious smile and small nose. Tiny gold earrings glinted in his ears, and a heavy-looking silver pendant, two winged serpents twined around each other, hung over his front.

"What manner of errand?" Basch asked.

"What errand?" The boy clasped his gloved hands behind his back, twirled on one heel, and paced to the grate in the center of the bridge. As if interested in the view, he peered through it. "I might ask the same of you."

Two heartbeats, and then Balthier said with false cheeriness, "Right, come on then."

Vaan gawked at him. "What?"

"Excellent," said the boy.

"Do me a favor and stay where I can keep my eye on you," Balthier said. "Should be less trouble that way."

"For us both," the boy agreed slyly.

Daina's eyebrows were in her hair, because since when did Balthier ever do something for someone else without prior coercion? However, she made no comment. She would wait and see what this was all about.

"So what's your name?" Vaan asked the boy – a standard question that would put all of his fears at ease, Daina knew.

"Oh." The boy's eyes went to the clouds above them and he turned away again. "I – I'm Lamont."

Vaan rubbed one finger under his nose. "Don't worry. I don't know what's in that mine, Lamont, but you're in good hands." He put his hand on the small boy's shoulder and then grinned. "Right, Basch?"

Shock wiped Balthier's expression clean, but then fury darkened his features, and only by a supreme effort did Daina manage not to put her face in her hands. _Vaan, you simpleton_!

When Basch merely sighed over Vaan's confused head, Lamont smiled.

No longer talking, the six of them wound through Bhujerba's narrow, up-and-down streets, occasionally asking directions of one of the friendly parijanah tour guides with their blue books. An inordinate number of miners clogged the byways, talking or lazing about, watching them pass with dull, resentful eyes. Sainikah soldiers blocked several side streets, and Daina heard a passing conversation that told her the sainikah were there to keep the miners and tourists out of the mines because of an Imperial inspection. Balthier walked by one of the blue-vested sainikah, his hand smoothly passing a bribe on the way past, so no one detained them.

"The Lhusu Mines," he announced at the top of a long flight of stairs and another bridge that led straight to a wide, well-traveled mine entrance. "One of the richest veins in Ivalice."

"An unsettling sight," Daina said, "to stand before a mouth of rock and earth that leads belowground on a continent in the sky."

"Under Imperial guard, no doubt," Basch diagnosed.

Young Lamont pushed past him, his chin high. "Actually, no. With but few exceptions, the Imperial army is not permitted in Bhujerba. Well, shall we proceed?"

Basch and Balthier, with more than ten years separating them, shared an amused but baffled look.

They descended into the gloom of the mine. Then, before she took a score of steps, Balthier grabbed Daina's wrist and yanked her behind a pillar, where Fran and Basch already hid. A few seconds later, Lamont and Vaan heard the footsteps and vanished behind another pillar. From inside the mines, a strange party approached, led by a judge magister.

_It's not Gabranth_, Daina told her painfully pounding heart, but the sight of that heavy armor had given her a scare before her brain registered the different design. And there, just behind the judge, strode an older gentleman in a long, tight-fitting coat, a jewel-headed cane in his gloved hand, his face set in dignified offense.


	17. Footfalls of the Past

"You will forgive me for asking," the helmed judge said, an unfamiliar voice muffled in a familiar, metallic way, "but you are diverting the purest of the magicite –"

"I can assure you it reaches Lord Vayne most discretely," the noble interrupted in a saturated Bhujerban accent.

"You wear your saddle well," the judge approved.

Aside from the judge and the noble, a pair of Imperial soldiers and two male rev valets paced at the back of the party. The revs, as well dressed and dignified as their master, narrowed feline eyes at the judge, their furred muzzles tightening. The noble tapped his cane on the stone floor, head high.

"Be that as it may," he said, "I have no intention of being bridled, Your Honor."

"Then you prefer the whip? Stubbornness will see not only you broken, Excellency, but Bhujerba as well."

With this threat, the party ascended the steps and disappeared into the daylight outside. Slowly, Lamont emerged from behind the pillar, staring after them. "Halim Ondore IV, the marquis of Bhujerba. The marquis served as mediator at the negotiations of Dalmasca's surrender. It would appear that he is somewhat less neutral now."

Balthier cocked his head. "They say he's been helping the Resistance."

"They say many things." Lamont didn't bother looking at the sky pirate.

"You're certainly well informed," Balthier went on, nonchalant. "Who did you say you were, again?"

"What difference does it make?" Vaan butted in. "We have to find Penelo."

That got Lamont's attention. "And Penelo is your –"

"She's a friend. She was kidnapped and taken here." As if unable to control his impatience, Vaan ran off, giving the rest of them no choice but to follow.

Daina sighed. Penelo. Of course they were here to save Penelo. Her knight's honor would allow no less. But Daina chafed against the delay, anxious to find and rescue her Lady as her vows demanded.

Balthier and Fran kept Lamont back with them, where they could cover him with shot and arrow, though the boy used his twin swords to good effect. Daina, for her part, blocked Vaan at every step, constantly reminding the Dalmascan to stay with them.

They made their way slowly, often consulting the map Lamont carried, battling through vampyr bats and corpses armored like knights. The skull defenders were the worst. The undead swarmed their party when they stepped onto a long railway bridge, the Shunia Twinspan, surrounded on two sides by the dizzying expanse of sky. The skeletons squawked like monkeys, hitting hard with their spears and their magicks. For every one that fell to Daina's osafune, two more assembled themselves from the cracks between the rails and sleepers. Their blood-darkened bones, as well as the stench of death and black magick, were horrible.

So rattled by the experience was she, that she voluntarily spoke to Basch while everyone else tried to catch their breath, safe on the far side of the bridge. "Do you ever wonder if that could happen to you?"

Basch paused in the act of retying one of his gloves, and studied the now-quiet bridge. "The thought has crossed my mind," he said at last.

"They were once men." Daina hugged herself while the icy wind pulled at her green coat and her braid. "Knights who could not bear to be released from their vows by death, forced to wander for eternity, trapped souls, full of anger and despair. As I am. I am angry that I could not protect Amalia. I despair that I cannot help her as I am now."

"It is easy to imagine for yourself such a fate?"

"Not quite." She looked up at him. "It is hard to discredit the possibility."

"I do not see one such as you succumbing to their useless existence," he said quietly, albeit reassuringly. "While we live, there is yet hope, but it would be foolish to believe fighting is all you have. Amalia would not wish it."

It was so faint that Daina might have missed it if she wasn't watching him so closely. The ghost of a smile touched his lips. For some reason, she felt comfortable talking to him. Out of their group, only he would truly understand her feelings and her drive to protect Amalia.

"Let's go," Balthier called.

Daina blinked, and Basch looked away. Whatever spell that had held her dissolved. And they moved on.

In a large cavern, Lamont knelt and patted the luminescent blue ground. "This is what I came here to see," he said, his eyebrows contracting. From within his waistcoat, he produced a large violet-blue crystal, which looked like a bottle of potion minus the neck. It glowed, eldritch, behind a latticework of metal bands.

"What's that?" Vaan asked, peering over his shoulder.

"It's nethicite. _Manufacted_ nethicite."

Lost, Vaan repeated, "Nethicite?"

"Unlike regular magicite, nethicite absorbs magickal energy. This is the fruit of research into the manufacture of nethicite. All at the hands of the Draklor Laboratory."

The way he said it made Draklor sound like a school for mad scientists. Balthier squinted at the boy, wholly focused now. Unaware, Lamont stood and approached one of the rough hewn walls, running his gloved hand along it. "So this is where they're getting the magicite from."

As rangy as a coeurl, Balthier glided toward him. "Errand all attended to, then?" he asked, deceptively friendly.

"Thank you," Lamont said, turning around. "I'll repay you shortly."

Balthier's hand descended near the boy's head to rest against the wall, trapping him. He leaned in. "No, you'll repay us now."

He sounded angry, dangerous, and Daina turned on Fran. The viera's face was as impassive as always, but her eyes were fixed so tenderly on Balthier that Daina forced herself not to interfere. Surely, if Balthier meant to hurt the boy, Fran would stop him.

"We have too much on our hands to go on holding yours," Balthier said. "So where did you hear this fairy tale about nethicite? And where did you get that sample you carry? What do you know about the Draklor Laboratory?" He spoke faster. "Tell me: Who are you?"

"Balthier –" Vaan started, distressed, but then a snarl reverberated through the cavern.

"You kept us waiting, Balthier!"


	18. Royal Passage

Ba'Gamnan hulked toward them, his three bangaa henchmen closing ranks behind. With a jolt, Daina realized that one of them was female, her hide a pale lavender that belied the cruelty in her black eyes. A laugh smeared itself all over the bounty hunter's elongated face. "You slipped away in Nalbina. We missed you! First the judge, and now this boy. The whole affair has the smell of money. I may have to wet my beak a little."

"Keep your snout in the trough where it belongs," Balthier called scathingly. "This thinking ill befits you, Ba' Gamnan."

"Balthier!" Ba'Gamnan howled, clenching his black-gloved hands. His tail thrashed. "Too long have I gone unpaid! I'll carve my bounty out of that boy!"

Vaan popped out from behind Balthier. "Where's Penelo?" he demanded. "We're taking her back!"

"The girl?" Ba'Gamnan peered blearily at Vaan, and then tilted his head; bangaa couldn't trust their weak eyesight and instead relied on their two-part ears. "Why keep the bait when you've landed the fish? We cut her loose on the way here and then off she ran, crying like a babe!"

His guttural laughter switched to a gasp of pain when Lamont unexpectedly chucked the nethicite at his head. It bounced off with a solid _thwack_, and the child darted forward, scooping up his nethicite sample before taking off down the tunnels.

Daina swore, ripping the osafune out of its sheath. Balthier knocked the dazed Ba'Gamnan to the ground, pelting after Lamont, and Fran leapt right over the snarling bangaa. Vaan, Daina, and Basch gave chase.

"After them!" Ba'Gamnan roared.

"We'll not be able to take them all!" Balthier yelled. Lamont had already vanished.

"Then leave them to me," Basch decided, drawing his sword.

Vaan and Daina followed his lead, and turned to face the bounty hunters, the two knights and the boy with swords drawn, and the four bangaa, fanning out, surrounding them. Then Basch, holding his mythril blade to his forehead, cast a spell that smacked into Ba'Gamnan's three cohorts and immobilized them. Taking his cue, Daina and Vaan both slung their own rudimentary spells of water and fire, utilizing the trapped Mist from the unmined magicite, before all three of them charged in with their blades. Only Ba'Gamnan escaped damage by leaping away on his strong, bandy legs. He circled around and smashed through Daina's belated defense, bowling her over with his larger mass.

She was up again in an instant, striking at Ba'Gamnan, who infuriatingly blocked each blow with the chainsaw lance clutched in his claws. Too soon, the immobilize spell expired and his siblings were freed, but at that moment Vaan and Basch executed a perfect synchronized attack, and one of the bangaa fell, cut open to his gizzard.

The female squealed in terror, turned tail, and fled. Two down, two to go.

"Bwagi? Rinok?" Ba'Gamnan pulled up short, mouth open as if tasting the air, and Daina's osafune whipped upward, catching him in the bristly chin.

"Confound you!" he howled, stumbling backward, clawed fingers clutching at his bleeding chin. "I will have my pound of flesh yet, Balthier!"

With that, he ran, the third brother staggering after him, supporting the weight of the recently revived Bwagi.

Daina and the others dashed in the opposite direction, fleeing down the long mine tunnels from every undead defender and two-legged, tortoise-shelled slaven – they didn't have time to slay the monsters if they meant to overtake the boy. They caught up with Fran and Balthier, but that was only because they were crouched at the entrance to the mines. Balthier grabbed Vaan before he could step into the sunlight.

There, in Lhusu Square, Lamont calmly approached a group of waiting people, which included the judge, Marquis Ondore, the hume soldiers and bottlebrush-tailed revs, and a very small-looking, close-to-tears Penelo. The judge saw the boy first.

"I see you've been out walking without the company of your cortege, Lord Larsa," the judge observed.

Vaan struggled with Balthier, trying to get to Penelo, but the sky pirate held him fast and out of sight of the Imperials.

Gesturing at Penelo, at her pigtails with the feathers tied into the ends, the judge said, "We caught her wandering out of the mines. You must take care with such undesirables about."

"I was _kidnapped_ –" Penelo fired up, but she flinched when the judge barked, "Silence!"

The child that had given them the name _Lamont_ frowned at the judge. "If it is a crime to wander on one's own, then I, too, am guilty." He turned to the white-haired noble. "Marquis. I trust that your estate can accommodate another guest?"

"Why not?" said Ondore smoothly.

"Judge Ghis, I shall heed your counsel," the boy went on. "I will not travel unaccompanied any longer." With that, he grabbed Penelo's hand and the two of them trotted off together.

"What's Penelo doing?" Vaan fumed when Balthier's hands finally dropped. He turned helplessly to Daina. "And what's the deal with that Lamont?"

She opened her mouth, but Balthier beat her to it. "That's no 'Lamont.' Larsa Ferrinas Solidor. Fourth son to Emperor Gramis, and brother to Vayne."

"What? That kid?"

Fran put a hand to her hip. "Do not worry," she said. "I believe he will treat her well."

"Nobody knows men like Fran does," Balthier said with a devilish smirk.

As Vaan gazed bemusedly at Fran, Basch changed the subject. "Our purposes lead the same way: To Ondore. We must find means to approach him."

"The marquis is channeling money to organizations opposing the Empire," Balthier said, and Daina nodded in agreement, no longer questioning his apparent knowledge of everything happening in Ivalice. "We'll start there."

Everybody looked at Daina, and she crossed her arms thoughtfully. "I'm afraid I'm something of a non entity. Since the Resistance began two years ago, it has spread beyond our direct management. I do not expect that the anti-Imperial elements here in Bhujerba will willingly speak with me without proof of my allegiance. We need something a little larger than my name to gain their ear."

"Marquis Ondore announced my execution two years ago," Basch said slowly. "If news of my survival were to spread, the marquis may find his position compromised."

Balthier nodded, apparently pleased with Basch's train of thought. "The men he's been funding bear little love for the Empire. They won't be thrilled to discover that the rumors of your death were, in fact, greatly exaggerated. If we were to raise a clamor to that effect, we might just get their attention."

After discussing the particulars of their plan, they sent Vaan off to raise the clamor, and then the rest withdrew into the shadows to wait for what prey their bait would fetch.


	19. Inner Ward

"Something's happening," Daina murmured, sequestered in an empty alley with Balthier, and the sky pirate straightened alertly.

Vaan, who had scuttled through three districts yelling things like, "I am Captain Basch fon Ronsenburg!" and "Basch lives!" to every Bhujerban he saw, now found himself the center of a rather large group of miners, shopkeepers, civilians, and parijanahs. One parijanah in particular, made distinct by his missing tour guide smile and flanked by a gray-skinned bangaa, moved in close to him.

"You, boy." Bhujerban accent, words spoken by a glib hume tongue. The parijanah. "You will come with us."

Whatever might have been Vaan's reply, it was lost when the bangaa closed a clawed hand around Vaan's bicep and lifted the Dalmascan onto his toes.

"Let's be off," Balthier said unconcernedly, his gaze trained across the street to where Fran and Basch lurked. They nodded at him, and when Daina and Balthier stepped into the flow of people to follow Vaan and his captors, the viera and the knight slid smoothly in as well, several paces back.

Interestingly, the parijanah led them to The Cloudborne, Bhujerba's pub. With so many miners out of work that day, the patrons spilled out of the double entrances, drinks in hand, to mingle drunkenly in the street.

With Balthier's help, Daina reached the back of the overcrowded pub. Cocking his head at her, Balthier pushed experimentally on the door concealed behind a wall hanging, and to her surprise, it opened.

A voice floated out to them.

"This is the one, Havharo. Says he's Captain Basch he does."

A male voice, presumably Havharo's, answered. "He would sooner pass for the king."

"I knew he weren't no captain!" the first voice whined. Probably the bangaa. "That was a mean trick to be playing."

Fran and Basch scanned the dining room, searching for a trap, but no one in the pub took notice of them as they hovered by the hidden door, and Daina bent to listen once more.

"If at trickery it ended," Havharo was saying, "it would end well enough. But why this boy, and why Captain Ronsenburg? An explanation is due, and I will hear it. The Empire's hounds grow passing bold indeed."

As if tired of skulking out of the limelight, Balthier crossed into the back room with Fran on his heels. Loudly, he said, "A shame if they learnt the marquis trafficked with the likes of you. Agents masquerading as guides. A hideout at the back of a tavern. Not exactly earning high marks for originality, are we?"

Daina entered next, and every eye in the room zeroed in on her. She looked unflinchingly at the man seated at the table, Havharo, and the woman leaning possessively on his shoulder. They were Resistance. So was she. She put her hand on the osafune's hilt.

"Wait!" Havharo said, but then Basch strolled in, and the Bhujerban crossed his arms, leaning back meditatively. "So Basch fon Ronsenburg does yet live."

They had a story to relate, quite a long one, and Basch and Daina shared the telling. Vaan fidgeted as the afternoon wore on, obviously bored, and even Balthier seemed anxious to leave.

Havharo grinned. "I knew there must be more to it, but to find you at the end of this tale . . . Ah, to see the marquis's face when he learns of it."

"I should like nothing more," Basch said. "I would meet him, and see for myself."

Havharo leaned back in his chair, speaking over his shoulder. "How say you, My Lord?"

Out of the shadows strode one of the rev valets, and Daina started – she hadn't seen his red-bearded, leonine face until then. "There is little to be said," he rumbled. "I shall arrange a meeting with the marquis. We shall expect you at the estate."

* * *

Daina had never been introduced to Amalia's uncle. She knew him only by the gift of secrecy his memoirs granted them the night they fled Rabanastre. Since then, there had been no direct contact with Bhujerba. A sainikah escorted her and the others into a drawing room, and there, behind a large desk, sat the Marquis Ondore in his high-collared coat. Daina waited respectfully back with Fran while Basch took his place for the interview.

"Sir Basch fon Ronsenburg," Ondore said, his expression a mixture of resigned and amused. "It was not so very long ago that I announced you had been executed."

"And that is the only reason I draw breath," Basch said.

Ondore sighed. "So you are the sword he's strung above my head. Vayne has left not a thing to chance." He fixed his gaze unsmilingly on the captain. "And?"

"A leader of the Resistance has fallen into Imperial hands. A woman by the name of Amalia. I would rescue her, but I need your help."

"This Resistance leader – this Amalia," Ondore said slowly, playing along for the benefit of Balthier, Fran, and Vaan. "She must be very important."

Basch said nothing.

"You understand I've my position to consider," Ondore said, lacing his gloved fingers.

What was he saying? Daina frowned, ducking her chin so her lily-blonde hair would cover her face. He'd mentioned something about a sword, one held by Vayne. Perhaps . . . it was _Vayne_ who had compelled the marquis to announce Basch's execution and then imprisoned the former knight alive in order to keep Ondore, and the Lhusu Mines, under control. But if that was so . . .

"Would you let us see Larsa?" Vaan asked suddenly, and rudely, jerking Daina out of her thoughts. "He's got my friend with him."

The marquis blinked at him and then said, "I'm afraid you're too late. Lord Larsa's cortege has already rejoined the Imperial detachment. I am told they will depart for Rabanastre upon the arrival of the fleet this eventide."

Balthier grabbed Vaan to keep him from rushing out of the room, and the two of them struggled, pushing Daina and Fran apart. Basch had not moved.

"What are we waiting for?" Vaan exclaimed.

"For you to calm down," grunted Balthier.

"Captain Ronsenberg," Ondore said loudly. "Surely the exigencies of position are not lost on you. Why indeed, you should find the enemy's chains an easy burden to bear."

A pause. Basch turned to face them, and his expression –

"Wait!" Balthier yelled, shoving Vaan away.

"Sorry," Basch said in his rough voice. "Can't be helped."

"No!" Daina shouted, jumping toward him, but she wasn't close enough to stop him as he drew his sword and pointed it at the marquis.

"Summon the guard!" Ondore commanded, composedly getting to his feet.

A valet opened the door and sainikah flooded the room. Daina fought them off, but without the help of her osafune, which she refused to draw on non-Imperials, they quickly pinned her arms and forced her to her knees.

"Damn you!" she cried. "There has got to be a better way than this!"

But it was too late. Iron cuffs snapped closed on her wrists.

"They're to be taken to Judge Ghis," Ondore said coolly.


	20. The Bounds of Truth

Daina had never been so angry in her life. She sang to that abominable man – actually helped him to sleep! – and what had he done to thank her? Turned them over to the Empire. And now here she was, bound in chains – _again_ – and herded onto the Dreadnought_ Leviathan_ like . . . like a common thief!

Well. Maybe not a _common_ thief. The _Leviathan_ was the flagship of the 8th royal fleet. It was hardly possible to be tried by a higher power, unless by Emperor Gramis himself. Somehow, she did not feel flattered.

If her current luck held steady, she might end up dumped right back in Nalbina. All because she'd pitied a fellow knight who'd lost his time.

Once her hands were free, she decided, she'd punch his lights out but good.

Chained together as they were, the five of them shuffled where their guards led them, straight onto _Leviathan_'s bridge. Only then, when there was no hope of reaching either Dorstonis or the two nearest land masses, the continents of Valendia or Kerwon, were their ankle shackles removed.

"The prisoners, My Lord," one of the soldiers announced, and Daina sourly looked up.

Two more soldiers flanked Judge Ghis and the fair-haired woman at his side.

_Amalia_!

Stunned into utter uselessness, Daina watched as Amalia walked up to them. It was a dream. Amalia couldn't be here, could she? She had to be dreaming!

Amalia herself looked like she could be dreaming, her face peaceful and lovely as the dawn.

"Majesty –" Basch said, his voice going lower with emotion.

But Amalia slapped him across the face. Hard. The sharp sound hung in the sterile air. "After what you've done!" she seethed. Her voice rose almost to a shout. "How dare you! You're supposed to be _dead_!"

As if offering her the chance to hit him again, Basch slowly turned his head. His face was unreadable.

Daina didn't want to read it. Her earlier anger died, shriveled up like a succulent fruit in the desert, leaving her feeling guilty and wrung out, even though Amalia had just done what Daina herself had wanted to do. Basch had gone through the farce of threatening Ondore to bring them to Amalia. Expedient, if risky. He'd put them all in danger to save Ondore's reputation. Nalbina was still an option.

So was execution.

"Come now, come now," Judge Ghis chortled. He approached Amalia, his helm tilted toward the prisoners. "Have you forgotten your manners? This is hardly the courtesy due the late Princess Ashelia B'nargin Dalmasca."

"Princess?" Vaan blurted, almost gagging over the word. Balthier and Fran exchanged horrified looks.

Ghis nodded sagely. "To be sure, she bears no proof of her former station. No different than any mean member of the Insurgence."

"The Resistance," Amalia – Ashe – corrected regally, her eyes locked on Basch.

"Without proof, my dear, how is anyone to know that you are who you say you are, and not this charming girl?"

Reeling from this pseudo reunion with her Lady, it took Daina a few moments to realize Judge Ghis was talking about her. She and Ashe were close in age, their coloring and bearing similar, perfect for a cuckoo deception – but Daina was not royalty, and everybody on the bridge knew it. She blinked up at the judge in disgust, and then glanced at her Lady. Ashe's mouth tightened, and Daina felt sick. There was nothing welcoming about Ashe's demeanor at all. She looked furious.

"The Consul asks the ministry of the disthroned royal family in restoring peace to Dalmasca," Ghis continued, sweeping away from Daina, cloak fluttering, and drawing Ashe's disbelieving attention after him. "Those who foster instability and unrest, who claim royal blood without proof, they shall meet their fate at the gallows. There are no exceptions."

"I will not play puppet to Vayne," Ashe said acidly.

Abruptly, Basch spoke. To Ashe, he said, "King Raminas entrusted me with a task. Should the time come, he bade me give you something of great importance. It is your birthright: The Dusk Shard." Then, he raised his voice for Ghis. "It will warrant the quality of her blood. Only I know where to find it."

"Wait." Ashe's eyes narrowed. Her chest rose and fell, but she lost the battle with her hatred and shouted, "You took my father's life! Why spare mine now? You would have me live in shame!"

"If that is your duty: Yes," he said brutally.

Daina tried to catch her breath. It was all happening too fast. When had she forgotten that Basch had been framed for the murder of Ashe's father? When had she forgotten that Ashe had not learned of Vayne's hand in the assassination?

When had Daina started trusting Basch, as she had been used to trust Vossler?

"Stop being so stubborn!" Vaan burst out, running up to Ashe as if she were still an equal. As if she'd ever been an equal. "Keep on like this and you're gonna get us all killed."

"Don't interrupt!" Ashe snarled. A dreadful silence followed, and Vaan backed up, hurt written all over his face. And then Ashe gasped.

In Vaan's hands, an uncut orange crystal – the same one he had offered to Balthier in the Sandsea – began to glow like flame encased in glass.

Basch's voice seemed to come out of the depths of a grave. "Vaan. That stone."

"It was in the palace treasury," he said helplessly.

"Well, well," Balthier murmured at Daina's side, and Ghis broke into laughter.

"Splendid!" he cried, descending on Vaan. "You've brought the stone with you! This spares us a great deal of trouble."

"Don't give it to him!" Ashe cried as Ghis grabbed her elbow and hauled her roughly to the side, holding out his other hand to Vaan.

Vaan turned frightened eyes on Daina, who returned his gaze, equally scared. This was bad. Worse than bad. _Hellish_. He silently appealed to Balthier and Fran next. The two sky pirates nodded at Vaan to give the stone up. There was no other choice.

Vaan swallowed, his adam's apple bobbing. "You have to promise," he said bravely to Ghis, holding out the stone. "No executions."

"A judge's duty is to the law," Ghis drawled. Daina was glad she couldn't see his gloating face when he palmed the stone. "Take them away. Lady Ashe is to be quartered separately."

Once again, as the soldiers rounded them up and forced them off the bridge, Daina felt Ashe's absence and disapproval like a physical, arctic wind, sealing her up in a pillar of ice, preventing any positive action, and she fought the tears that threatened to tear her apart.


	21. Hall of the Sentinel

A tear escaped and skied icily off her cheek before anger at herself reared up to dry her eyes. She walked beside Fran, neither of them speaking, Vaan somewhere behind them, Balthier and Basch bringing up the rear.

Fran's ear flicked.

"So you were carrying it all along," Basch said wearily. "The Fates jest."

"Tell these Fates of yours to leave me out," Balthier groused.

"Keep quiet!" barked one of the soldiers.

Basch ignored him. "There was nothing else that I could do. You know that."

"Oh, I understand." Balthier heaved a sigh; Fran's ear flicked again. "Honor, duty, and all that. I still can't believe that was the princess."

"I said keep quiet!"

The soldier attempted to force Balthier's silence by jabbing at the sky pirate with his spear, but as he did, Balthier and Basch took one step apart, and the younger man grabbed the shaft of the spear and yanked the soldier off his feet. Then, when the soldier stumbled forward between them, Basch brought his iron cuffs down on his unprotected neck. Swiftly, Fran lashed out with her long leg, sending another soldier to the floor with a tremendous crash. The third soldier, however, was incapacitated by the final Imperial, who then removed his helm.

"Vossler!" Daina cried, and he grinned.

Basch raised his eyebrows at his one-time friend. "The marquis has been busy."

"Not lightly did I beg his aid," Vossler said, his grin fading. He reached for Basch's cuffs, speaking low and quick. "Listen, it has been a full two years. I alone have kept Her Majesty safely hidden. I doubted friend and foe alike. I could trust nobody."

"You did your duty. And mine for me."

"I'm getting her out," Vossler said, moving on to Balthier. "I need your help."

"Of course," Basch said.

Daina said nothing.

_I alone have kept Her Majesty safely hidden . . . I could trust nobody._

Part of Daina shut off, or perhaps it split in two. Freed of the cuffs, she walked through the _Leviathan_'s corridors with the others, avoiding the intruder alarm light webs and the patrolling Imperials. Once, she jerked Vaan backward before he could blunder through a one-way trip alarm, having seen the black lenses of the motion sensor nodes peering from the ceiling when he had not.

But that other part of her, the one that didn't have to do with fighting or the sword, buzzed like a trapped antares mantis.

Vossler. _I alone have kept Her Majesty safely hidden _. . . But he hadn't done it alone. Daina had worked together with him, taking care of the things for her Lady that a man simply couldn't do. The three of them, in complete confidence.

. . . _I could trust nobody_.

Was that why he had sent her with Basch? Had made zero attempt to contact her? Because, in truth, _he didn't trust her_?

The burn of her volatile temper kept her blade sharp. When they entered the Central Brig Access and six Imperials accosted them, she cut down the magus and whirled on one of the minor judges, sending him to his death without either laying spell or weapon on her.

Vaan dropped into a crouch at the end of the battle, searching their bodies. "One of them should have a brig key," he explained, and then held it up in triumph.

"Good," Balthier approved, clapping Vaan on the shoulder, and Vaan grinned.

"Let's go," Daina said in monotone, sheathing the osafune. She missed the questioning looks they sent her way.

And then, at long, long last, they invaded the brig, opened a cell door, and discovered Ashe, sitting pensively on the bench.

She looked up.

Daina fell upon her, all knightly honor and dignity flung to the four winds. After a moment, Ashe's slender arms circled Daina's shoulders, and the two women held each other tightly.

"You weren't supposed to come," Ashe said, sounding resigned. "I meant you to be safe."

Daina wanted to laugh, to cry, to _sing_. So that was why. All the coldness, the stranger's eyes – it had been an act. "You aren't allowed to worry about me," she said in what she meant to be a stern tone, but her relief made it wobble. "You have all of Dalmasca to protect. Permit me to do my duty and protect _you_."

Vossler's clipped voice broke in on them. "You are unharmed."

"Vossler!" Ashe shot to her feet. "I –"

She stopped, eyelids fluttering, and then pitched forward. Vossler caught her. "Majesty!"

"It's nothing," Ashe said faintly, righting herself. She stood alone, gathering her imperiousness about her like a coat. In a stronger voice, she added, "I'll be fine."

Daina hovered behind her Lady. After all Ashe had been through, it was no wonder she was overwhelmed. Daina purposely didn't look at Vossler, but in avoiding his eye, she caught someone else's. Basch.

So did Ashe. Her eyes narrowed to slits of stormy gray. "_You_."

"Come on, come on!" Vaan called from the hallway; Daina caught a glimpse of him fairly dancing with impatience. "Let's go! What are you waiting for? Penelo's still out there!"

Basch and Ashe remained locked in a stare down, Ashe projecting an aura of venom, he as impervious and immovable as rock. Anxiety flooded Daina. She didn't want – what?

Her Lady to hate Basch?

Why did it matter so much?

"We should hurry." Balthier, calm and sardonic. "They won't be long."

Vossler got between the ex-princess and the ex-knight. "We will talk later."

No sooner had they exited the brig, however, than a wail that pierced Daina's eardrums began, and the area plunged into red-lit twilight. Imperials flooded the corridors, some leading giant, slavering mastiffs.

"Majesty," Basch said, gentle as always. "We will cut you a path."

Ashe glared at him. "I will not place my trust in the sword of a traitor!"

"Yet trust his sword we must," Vossler argued, "traitor or no. I see no other way. We track back, commandeer a ship and make our escape."

He met all of their gazes as he said this, reverting to his old role as a leader of the Resistance. Daina looked away, smoldering. Did he trust her, or not?

The others ran off, Balthier and Vaan in the front of the pack, and Daina prepared to follow her Lady, but when Vossler spoke to Basch in a low voice, curiosity got the better of her and she lingered to listen.

"Her Majesty cannot abide weakness, least of all in herself. We must make her confront the reality of our plight."

Daina clenched her fists and stalked off, pretending she hadn't heard. What Vossler had said of Ashe was true, the first part, but Daina didn't believe for one second that Ashe didn't understand their situation. Of all of them, Lady Ashe probably understood the most.

It was Vossler who had lost sight of reality.


	22. Terminus No 4 Adjunct

There was no way to avoid fighting this time, not with the alarms screaming fit to wake the dead. Daina couldn't care less, because Ashe fought right next to her. Elation made the osafune as light as holy magick.

They left a trail of death clear across the _Leviathan_.

Balthier ferreted out the security terminals and shut off the sirens. The ensuing silence was more deafening than the noise had been. "That's not permanent," he informed them, fixing his cuff. "Time is short."

They burst into an atrium with a dark marble floor that was polished like glass. Daina slid right into Vaan when he skidded to a halt. Somehow, they both managed to stay standing. A pair of kids, a black-haired boy and a blonde girl, also came to a stop on the slippery floor, and then –

"Vaan!"

Penelo shot across the atrium and threw herself into Vaan's waiting arms.

"It's okay," he said into her hair. "We're okay."

The boy, Prince Larsa, approached them and the two teens broke apart. "Ghis knows you've escaped," he said. "You must hurry."

At this, Ashe and Vossler exchanged looks. Daina looked at Basch. He didn't seem surprised to see the prince on the Dreadnought. Larsa walked up to Vossler, who still wore an Imperial's armor.

"You are Captain Azelas. You will follow me. We must reach the airships before they do."

"You would let us leave knowing who we are?" Vossler asked, returning his greatsword to his back.

Larsa nodded, his face shining, and smiled at the Dalmascan princess. "Lady Ashe. By all rights you ought not even to exist. That you and Captain Ronsenburg were made to appear dead is like a hidden thread laid bare." His earnestness unreeled like a fishing line, dangling the lure of his beliefs before them, drawing them closer. "Your actions hereafter will pull at that thread, and we will see that it unravels. This is our chance. We must see this through, and get to the bottom of it. I believe 'tis for the good of Dalmasca, _and_ the good of the Empire."

Ashe drew in a deep breath, her eyes sweeping over them: The Dalmascan orphans, her knights, the sky pirates. She nodded. "Very well, then."

"Thanks, 'Lamont,' " Vaan said, grinning.

"I must apologize," Larsa said, struggling with his own precocious smile. Then, he turned to Penelo. "For you."

He handed her the blue nethicite sample, and closed his hands over hers. "May it bring you good fortune."

"Thanks," Penelo breathed, her face suffused with the sweetest smile, while Vaan watched curiously.

"Let us go," Larsa said to Vossler. Vossler nodded at Basch, as if cementing a deal, and then he and the child went in one direction, looking innocuously like an Archadian prince and his Imperial escort, while Basch and Daina led the others in the opposite direction.

"The Port Launch is closest," she said, "where we boarded."

"This way," he said.

It didn't take long to reach the Port Launch. Perhaps that was why Daina retained the sense of security Larsa had afforded them. However, when they got there, Judge Ghis was waiting.

As one, they slowed and stopped. Ghis betrayed not a flicker of movement. His posture said it all: He had won, and he had the time to savor their defeat. Behind the party, three more swordsmen materialized and blocked the exit. Daina met Balthier's eye, and he thumbed the safety off his vega, his head cocked toward the rear. She nodded minutely, reading his intent.

Ghis spoke. "Such a great shame. I must confess: I thought you were the one who would help us restore peace to Dalmasca. No matter. We hold the proof of your royal lineage. A maid of –" the helm seemed briefly to turn to Daina, and he put heavy emphasis on his next words, "passing resemblance will serve our purposes now. As for you, my dear . . ."

He stretched out one hand. A ball of magickal red light formed above it. "The Empire requires you no more!"

With the last word, he cast his spell.

It _roared_, as hungry as a furnace, a whirlwind of Mist and death. Daina braced herself in front of Ashe, preparing herself for the impact even as her mind shrieked that it was no use.

And then something strange happened. The spiraling red light elongated, like a funnel of water sucked down a drain, and the full force of the killing magick vanished. Right into the shining blue crystal in Penelo's hands. After, the crystal twinkled benignly, giving no hint of the power it had just absorbed.

"What was that?" the girl gasped.

"The nethicite," Balthier murmured.

"Your Majesty does not disappoint!" Ghis bellowed, drawing his weapons. "Ever quick to spurn an honorable surrender, as was your father."

"You know nothing of my father!" Ashe cried. She readied her zwill blade and charged the judge.

Balthier whirled and fired, the shot tearing into the lead swordsman behind them and jerking him off balance. Daina's osafune danced in, stabbing through one of the weak points of the Imperial's armor, and his sword dropped from nerveless fingers. She severed his helmed head next.

Fran joined the fray, her arrows singing murder from her massive aevis killer bow. The remaining swordsmen fell in short order, resembling cactoids more than humes.

"Stay where you are!" Daina shouted at the Dalmascans as she ran to close the distance to Ashe. Vaan obeyed, shielding Penelo from the battle – but it was to her that Daina had directed the command, for the small girl was clutching a dagger. A blade that tiny would do no more than get her killed against a fully armored, full grown man like Ghis.

As it was, Ashe was in trouble. Basch was taking the brunt of the damage, but the judge was ruthless. He swatted the blond man aside with a steel boot to his sternum and brought both broadsword and wind-and-fire wheel down on Ashe. She crumpled. Her buckler caved, and she cried out in pain when it crushed her arm.

A katana was light and quick. Daina leapt into the fight, slashing at the judge's legs. With an awful screech, the osafune's edge cut through his red trousers and scraped against his greaves. She managed to block the broadsword on the upswing, but the wind-and-fire wheel caught the osafune, its spikes locking with the sword's blade.

Ghis wrenched the wheel to the side, and the osafune shattered.


	23. Antiquity's End

With her broken sword's hilt clutched in her fist, Daina dropped and rolled, and Ghis's broadsword smashed to the floor where she had been standing. She came out of the roll and regained her feet, painfully aware of how helpless she was without a sword, for she was no mage.

Ghis was laughing.

"Use the Mist!" Fran called. Daina looked to her helplessly. Use it how? "The nethicite is sated – it will not interfere!"

But then she realized that Fran had not been talking to her. Basch, a palm pressed to his bleeding chest, sheathed his sword and began a spell of such magnitude that his entire body glowed. Daina got to her feet in a hurry, for she saw Balthier and Fran doing the same, the three adults hedging Ghis in a triangle of power. His laughter died.

Daina rushed over to Ashe and the two women scrambled out of the line of fire before the humes and viera unleashed their quickening chain. Basch led the attack, calling dark green light between his palms, which he hurled at Ghis, drawing raw Mist after it like a riptide. Then, each building off this tsunami of power, Balthier and Fran added their own spells until the Mist blossomed out of their control. The raging cataclysm engulfed the judge and crushed the strength out of him.

The quickening dissipated. Ghis staggered drunkenly around, tugging his helm off, which revealed dark, receding hair and deceptively droopy eyes, and then he fell face first to the floor, unconscious.

Vossler, sweaty and out of breath, burst into the hangar. "We've secured an atomos. Come!"

* * *

Daina salvaged the green tassel when she discarded the osafune's remains.

Back in Bhujerba, she yawned as she walked past Penelo and Balthier, their words drifting meaninglessly by her.

"Balthier, your handkerchief. I thought you might want it back."

"I shall wear it close to my heart."

It was somewhere between midnight and dawn. The stolen atomos sat abandoned in the deserted Aerodrome, the royal fleet had departed for a destination unknown, and Daina shook her hair off her face as she joined Vossler, Ashe, and Basch. Vossler had shed his Imperial disguise and stood once again in Dalmascan gear, linen shorts and metal and leather tunic.

Basch's amber eyes flicked to her, and she lowered her own to her feet. It was late – _early_ – and she was tired. If he wanted to stare at her, fine. She was beyond caring what he thought at the moment. Ashe was safe. That was all that mattered.

And Ashe, predictably, was still going full steam ahead.

"Perhaps you forget all that Ondore has wrought," she said.

"I do not forget, Majesty," Basch said in his rough, low voice.

Daina shivered. Oh, she cared what he thought, all right.

Oblivious, he continued: "It was by his counsel, dangerous though it may have been, that we were able to free you. You must meet with him, Your Highness, and give ear to his words. He may act in league with the Empire, but his heart is not."

So to Ondore they went, all except Vossler, who left Ashe with the words, "I would have Basch remain at your side. Doubt him you may, but I measure his loyalty to Dalmasca no less than my own." He went, as he said, to seek other ways to restore Dalmasca's independence, and would return for her at a later date.

Ashe asked her uncle for Bhujerba's aid, but the marquis disappointed her, bitterly.

"Suppose for a moment you were to defeat Vayne, what then?" he asked. "You cannot simply rebuild your kingdom with the only proof of your birthright stolen. The Gran Kiltias on Bur-Omisace cannot recognize you as the rightful heir without it. You may yet be a princess, but without proof of your identity, you are powerless. You will remain with me. We do nothing till the time is right."

* * *

"Tell me why you are with him."

Sitting at the vanity with her damp, lily-blonde hair in her lap, Daina looked to her Lady's reflection in the three-part mirror. Ashe sat on one of the marquis's borrowed beds, tired and defeated, staring out of the window. Her regal profile against the sky was so beautiful. It didn't surprise Daina that Ashe's blood came from a people who lived among clouds and purified sunshine. Empyrean. The word suited her perfectly.

They'd had their baths and their meals, at Balthier's request ("Incidentally, what is the going rate for rescuing princesses these days? Food would be a start – the good stuff, mind you.").

But Ashe wasn't asking about Balthier. Daina set her hairbrush down, careful not to disturb the pots of makeup and hairpins scattered across the vanity's top, took a deep, slow breath, and then told her. Simply, leaving nothing out. Nalbina. Judge Gabranth. The oubliette and the crow's cage. The truths laid bare in Barheim. Vossler charging her to be the Resistance's eyes. Asking for help from the sky pirates and rescuing Penelo. Basch's desperate gamble.

"He risked us all to save you, Lady," Daina finished at last. She tied off the end of her braid. When she tossed it over her shoulder, the tip came to rest on the seat of her chair.

"He never spoke of his family," the princess murmured. "I wonder how much my father knew." Ashe sighed, and then rubbed her temples. "So you also ask for my trust on his behalf."

"I do," Daina said, and closed her eyes.

Mistake. Against the red-tinged darkness, she saw a flash of wheat gold. Sunlight, probably, but it looked an awful lot like his bright hair, and her eyes snapped open, her heart pounding.

To her consternation, she found Ashe watching her. Her face went hot.

Ashe set her elbows on her knees, laced her fingers, and put her hands in front of her mouth. "I've learned to rely on your judgment," she said. "It is sound, and not easily given. However, I think there's more to it than that."

There was. Why, oh _why_, hadn't Daina realized it before?

She could see it now that everything was over, their coup d'état failed, her escape from Nalbina attained, Ashe rescued, and all options at an end. They were adrift, and her mind was free to show her what had happened in the last two days.

That Daina Praeities of Nabradia was falling in love with Captain Basch fon Ronsenburg.


	24. Doubt Abandoned

This tumult of feelings made her so breathless. It delighted her whenever she saw him, it confused her whenever he looked her way, and it irritated her when others stole his attention. His voice, so terribly gentle, concealed the keen-edged core of steel in him that made her yearn to follow wherever he went, as if she were a flame drawn to his fire. Was this what it meant to fall in love?

Lady Ashe blurred in her vision as the tears began their familiar prickling. Daina cried so easily, like her mother. The one trait that set her apart from other knights.

Basch was a more experienced fighter. His skills, superior to her own. A true knight, steadfast, intelligent, and unshakable.

He was someone she could look up to.

"It doesn't matter," Daina said at last, and a single tear made a track down her cheek. She brushed it off, silently asking the others to stay where they were. "I give you my verdict on the side of truth, as I have seen it, and nothing else. The final decision is yours, My Lady."

"I can't make that decision right now. I need proof of my claim, and there is one, if only I could get to it," Ashe said, her thoughts very differently engaged than Daina's, and Daina felt ashamed of herself. Her purpose was to help her Lady reclaim her throne, restore Dalmasca's independence, and protect Ashe with her life. Especially now that Vossler had essentially abandoned them. She had no business worrying about love!

"The Dusk Shard was only one of three legacies," Ashe was saying. "It and the Midlight Shard are lost to us, but the Dawn Shard will serve my purpose just as well."

"My judgment tells me one other thing," Daina said. The osafune's absence on her hip made her feel unbalanced, reckless. "You are correct: We cannot just sit here and wait."

"What would you have me do?" Ashe asked, but not angrily. "Uncle Halim holds us here like birds in a cage without bars."

Vossler's words to Basch rang through Daina's head, and she grinned as she repeated Basch's response: "Even caged birds need wings."

Ashe looked up at her, and then understanding lightened her storm-gray eyes. Each movement barely controlled, Ashe stood, and the two women stealthily ran through the marquis's estate, exited the grounds, and headed once more for the Aerodrome. It was full day, and the Aerodrome was busy, so Ashe and Daina snuck into the _Strahl_'s hangar undetected.

Unfortunately, Vaan interrupted them before they got the engines started, and his incredulous exclamation almost stopped Daina's heart. "What are you doing?" he asked. "This is Balthier's ship."

Daina swore under her breath. Of course Vaan was there. He was so enamored with airships in general, and the _Strahl_ in particular, that he'd probably been ogling it in the hangar and watched them board.

"I'm going to retrieve the Dawn Shard," Ashe said, poking (so far unsuccessfully) at the controls. "It's the proof that I need. I know where it's hidden. I'll return his airship later."

"Are you crazy?" Vaan grabbed the back of her seat.

"This is something I have to do!" she yelled at him, as if pushed to the breaking point. Stress and guilt made her shrill. "For myself and all those who have fallen. I will not be made to hide! I'll fight alone, if I must." With that, she returned to analyzing the controls.

"You can't just go around stealing people's ships," Vaan said stubbornly. "What are you trying to do?"

"I'm trying to concentrate!"

"Stop it!" Daina slammed her hand onto the radar screen. One thing she had learned from Vossler – if she thought Ashe mistaken, she should say it. "Don't treat him like that. He's given us immeasurable aid. _His brother_ is one of those you want to avenge. Has it not occurred to you that he is one of your people? Besides, you have me. You will not fight alone!"

"Perhaps I was wrong," Ashe said, eyes flashing, "and your judgment is _too_ easily given."

"That's quite enough, Your Majesty," Marquis Ondore said, nearly giving Daina her second heart attack in as many minutes. All three of them whirled.

Balthier grinned behind a microphone that had all sorts of wires and buttons tacked on, as if in afterthought. "What do you think?" he drawled. "A bit over the top? In my line of work, you never know when something like this might come in handy." He pushed a button and a red light burned. He spoke in Ashe's voice: "I'm trying to concentrate!"

Tossing the mic aside, he sauntered up to them in the crowded cockpit. "I'm leaving you with the marquis."

"You can't," Ashe begged.

"Trust me, you're better off staying here." He folded his arms.

Thinking fast, Ashe blurted, "Suppose you kidnapped me instead? You're a sky pirate, aren't you? Then steal me. Is that so much to ask?"

"What do you have that I would want?" he sighed.

"The Dynast-King's treasure," she said immediately. "The Dawn Shard is but one of the riches that lie waiting in King Raithwall's tomb."

Balthier let out a low, appreciative whistle and eyed her over his shoulder. "King Raithwall, you say?"

"Kidnapping royalty is a serious offense," Basch said drily as he walked in.

Daina's heart somersaulted and went into overdrive.

"It won't do much to lower the bounty on your head," the knight finished.

Balthier smirked. "How much is the price on _your_ head these days, I wonder?"

"Allow me to escort you," Basch said to the flustered Ashe, and then he looked at Daina as if he knew the idea to filch the _Strahl_ had been hers. The faint smile-that-wasn't-a-smile touched his lips.

Daina ducked her head, hiding behind her curtain of hair, and squirmed by him to claim a seat in the back before she did something unknightly, like burst out laughing.

To complete their party, Fran and Penelo also entered.

"Will you be joining us?" the viera asked Vaan, who lit up like a firework.

"What, are you kidding? I don't wanna stick around this place."

"Then I'm coming too!" Penelo cried, darting to a seat and planting herself in it as if she meant to stay there until she died.

"Penelo?"

"Don't leave me here," she pleaded, and Vaan sighed.

"Of course not," he said.

"Then it's settled," Fran said smugly. She turned to Balthier, who ousted Ashe from his seat. "We should leave before the marquis realizes she's missing. Like proper kidnappers."


	25. Horizon's Cusp

"Wait," Vaan said. "We need to go back to Rabanastre."

Everybody looked at him.

"Absolutely not," Balthier said.

"We have to. Please, Balthier." Vaan leaned over his shoulder as the pirate piloted the _Strahl_ into the Westersand. "We have to tell Migelo that Penelo's all right."

Migelo? Daina frowned. That wasn't a hume name. Oh – Vaan must mean the blue-skinned bangaa that had sent them all on the mission to rescue Penelo. Seeing her opportunity, she spoke up. "I have an errand there, as well."

"I haven't said I'm landing," Balthier started, but Fran gave him a sideways look and he sighed. The airship banked. "Twenty minutes."

Daina left Ashe in Basch's care and tailed the other teenagers.

"So when you're in jagd, skystones don't work at all," Vaan was telling Penelo as they walked toward Rabanastre's Westgate, referring to their upcoming trip to the Jagd Yensa, which lay between the Westersand and the Rozarrian Empire, one of the many regions across Ivalice whose Mist-laden winds and magicite-rich soil interfered with airship operation. "That's why we gotta hoof it the rest of the way, ya see?"

Penelo grinned. "Happy you get to teach me something for a change?"

"Well, if you want to be a sky pirate, you have to know your – Hey! What do you mean 'for a change'?"

They dissolved into playful bickering. Daina didn't join in. She was busy scanning every person they came across in the bazaar, which included the faceless Imperials. Her likeness, and Vaan's as well, would be known here, for Vayne Solidor had seen them both the night of the fete. No one paid them the slightest attention, however, and they reached Migelo's Sundries without incident.

The reunion between the bangaa merchant and the orphans was predictably violent. He smothered Penelo in a hug that she laughingly detached herself from, and he thanked Vaan and Daina repeatedly in his querulous, booming voice.

Informing him that they were all going to leave again didn't go over as well, but he eventually relented and allowed them to restock their supply of potions, antidotes, eye drops, and other restoratives for half price.

"Vaan," Daina said as they exited the store for the crowds on the street, "I need a weapon shop."

"That'd be Amal's Weaponry. It's right over this way," he said, and ran off.

Daina had never bought anything from Amal; her original katana had been of Nabradian make. She sorted through the katanas set out for sale and settled on a kogarasumaru, which was as close to the kotetsu's design as she could find. She also selected an ashura, a shorter, straighter ninja sword, the blade of which was infused with dark magick, and stuck it in her swordbelt alongside the kogarasumaru. She was not going to be caught weaponless again.

Then she called Penelo over. "How good are you with that dagger?"

"It's served me well so far," Penelo said shyly. She was a very pretty girl, who seemed always on the brink of a laugh. She exuded optimism. No wonder Vaan cared for her so much.

"How about magick?"

Penelo brightened. "I'm better at that. Vaan doesn't really understand magick spells," she whispered, and giggled, "so I've been learning them instead."

"Good." Daina smiled. "I want you to take this. It will help with your spellcasting."

The other girl accepted the gilt measure and turned it over in her hands curiously. "This will cast a protective shield if I hit one of us with it, won't it?"

"Yes. Your first focus should be defense and healing, but if a beastie closes with you, go ahead and use your dagger."

Penelo glowed, probably pleased that someone, at last, was taking her seriously.

After a quick stop at Yugri's Magicks for new scrolls, the three teens used one of the free Moogling stations to return to the Westgate by teleportation, and then ran back to the waiting airship. As if Balthier's impatience translated to his piloting, the _Strahl_ lifted from the sands before they cleared the gangplank, causing Daina and Penelo to tumble into the loading bay. They laughingly helped each other stand, and then Penelo kicked Vaan's legs out from under him, just because she could. They were still arguing when they rejoined the others in the cockpit.

Feeling much better with a sword at her hip, Daina leaned back in her seat and sang to herself as the Westersand rolled by, the _Strahl_'s shadow a tiny patch of darkness flitting along beneath them.

She should have known she'd garner an audience.

Balthier brought the _Strahl_ to a hover, and Nono, her tiny moogle mechanic, dropped anchor. Hot desert air blasted in as Fran opened the door.

"That was pretty," Vaan said on his way by her, his eagerness to disembark overcoming his appreciation.

Daina laughed. "Thanks," she said to the empty air.

"It _was_ pretty," Penelo said, clasping her hands behind her back. "I've never heard that song before."

"It's Nabradian," Basch said from behind them.

Daina bit her lip. He was right, of course – but the fact that it had been a love song didn't make her feel at ease. Basch escorted Ashe down the gangplank. He was smiling, as if he'd enjoyed Daina's impromptu concert. He just didn't turn _away_ like other people! Or even look at who he was speaking to, if he wished to be looking at someone else.

As a group, they wandered to the edge of the sandsea, a massive ocher-hued ocean of granulated liquid that turned blue in the distance, tricking the mind into seeing true water. Rising from the torpid waves, an extensive array of rusting rigs, and a series of platforms and bridges, marched into the haze. Vaan knelt at the edge of the sandsea, scooping up a palmful of the strange waters.

Balthier spoke to Nono, and, with a fizzing sound, the _Strahl_ vanished, her shield camouflage blending perfectly with its surroundings. The last they saw of Nono was his paw, waving goodbye, before the shield blocked him from sight, too.

"So, where exactly is Raithwall's tomb?" Penelo asked.

Ashe combed her bangs to the side, her eyes fixed on the horizon. "Across the sandsea, to the Valley of the Dead."

The Valley of the Dead. So named for the many adventurers who had succumbed to the jagd and died there, never to be seen again.

"Far to the west." Basch lifted one hand and pointed. "We must first cross the Ogir-Yensa, and beyond that the Nam-Yensa, before we reach the tomb. An expanse of desert larger still than all of Dalmasca. We must pace ourselves. If we grow tired, we stop and take rest."

"You don't have to worry about me. I'm tougher than I look," Penelo announced.

Basch laughed – the first time Daina had heard him do so, and she immediately wished he would laugh again. "You are at that," he said easily.

There was no time to lose. With the Empire at their backs and the Valley of the Dead beckoning them forward, Ashe and her entourage ascended the first ramp.


	26. Augur Hill

Daina took her accustomed place behind and to the left of Ashe. Basch fell into step beside her. She wanted to speak with him, but her worry over Ashe's feelings kept her quiet. Even happy-go-lucky Vaan had taken some time to come to terms with Basch's presence, and his innocence. The crime in Nalbina two years past had been so much more grave than a single, heartless murder, its consequence encompassing every soul in Dalmasca, not just the orphan and his brother, and the aftermath of it rested squarely on Ashe's shoulders.

It was, to put it mildly, a mess.

Instead of speaking, Daina sang to the rhythm of their march. Not only Nabradian songs, but songs from Dalmasca, too. She even knew an Archadian ditty – not a very appropriate one because she'd picked it up from a drunken soldier, but at least she got a muffled laugh out of Balthier.

Everyone walked at their own paces, Fran understandably on edge. Viera didn't belong in this jagd wasteland, and the relentless urutan-yensa let them know that humes were far from welcome also.

Urutan-yensa endlessly patrolled the platforms, their crustacean-like bodies hidden behind cloaks and masks, their language full of clicks and scrapes that sounded like grinding metal. No one knew whether they needed to sleep, but their predilection for putting intruders under sleep spells suggested they did. The sandsea swirled beneath the catwalks, platforms, and bridges, the iron gone red with disuse, in some places entirely rusted through, collapsed, and forgotten. It was hard work fighting their way west, and far from linear.

The catwalks were rounded, like a series of rings connected by the straight expanse of bridges. Often, Daina completed a curve around a storage tank and stumbled upon a party of urutan-yensa, or a pack of alraunes, the spike-headed cousins of mandragora. The fighting was dirty, confined to the narrow catwalks, the bulk of the work falling on those with swords. There simply wasn't enough space for Fran or Balthier to have clear shots. After a few hours of this, Daina was covered in sand, rust, and sweat.

Near sunset, Basch called a halt at the top of a refinery tower, where silent machinery and fused gears sat indifferently in their sand-filled housings. Ashe lowered herself stiffly in the lee of a pipe, leaning her head back and closing her eyes. She was exhausted, but she never would have said so. Ever curious, Vaan peered over a railing, rust flaking beneath his palms. He stood there, poised at the edge of their narrow world, studying the giant hammer-like shape against the sun.

"A construct to draw oil from the ground," Basch told him, running a cloth along his sword's blade, inspecting both for sand. "Abandoned many years now, it seems."

Vaan brushed his hands on his trousers. "Did Dalmascans build this?"

"No. The Rozarrians. Their empire lies far to the west, ever at war with Archadia. Heedless of the kingdoms caught in their midst. Dalmasca." His amber eyes unerringly found Daina, where she stood listening. "Nabradia. Landis."

The last rays of the sun turned to molten gold, the wind warm and comfortable. Daina always enjoyed sunset on the desert, after the brutal heat of day and before the chill of night. She sat near Basch, the only Landisian she knew, and felt a little less sorry for herself. She cleaned her own blade with loving care. It had been two years since Nabudis's destruction – there were Nabradians in Ivalice still, though their numbers were few. Of Landis, a country that had died twenty-two years past, there was nothing left.

A heavy tread on the platform, just beyond the curve, impelled her to her feet, kogarasumaru drawn. The plant-like alraunes made little bubbly popping sounds, and the urutan-yensa's stilt-like feet tapped, metal against metal. Whatever was coming was neither. And then the newcomer spoke when he topped the ramp, continuing Basch's thought.

"'Tis the small craft's fate: To watch the list of the galleons and pray for light winds."

"Vossler!" Basch strode forward to clasp his friend's hand. "Why are you here?"

"Imagine my surprise, when upon my return to Bhujerba, I find both you and the Lady Ashe have vanished." He frowned in Balthier's direction. "I thought you above consorting with sky pirates."

Basch held his ground on that one, for which Daina was thankful, when he said, "Balthier is a man worthy of our trust. And it was the Lady Ashe's decision. I am content to lend my arm. As I could not when Rasler died, when her throne was taken. Never again. I will defend her this time."

"You walk the knight's path," Vossler said, laughing. "The Lady Ashe?"

Basch turned his head, but Daina intercepted Vossler. "She's fine, and she's resting. We shouldn't disturb her. How did you find us?"

"Balzac." Vossler put a hand to his hip. "Your shopping trip in Rabanastre did not go unnoticed. It only took a little work to discover the flight of the pirate's airship."

Daina had completely forgotten about Balzac. He had eyes everywhere. "We should keep moving, else others discover our intent with such apparent ease."

"Agreed," Basch said, and he went to speak with Ashe.

"Daina," Vossler said, stopping her. "Thank you."

"For what?"

"I asked you to be my eyes, and you have done remarkably well." He clapped a hand on her bare shoulder and grinned. "Tell me, what is your intent now?"

It wasn't right. Something . . . was off. Daina couldn't put her finger on it. His smile, perhaps, that didn't reach his eyes. She did not believe now that Vossler trusted her, but she could not imagine why he would suspect her of consorting with the Empire. So she told him of Lady Ashe's plan, until the Lady herself joined them and confirmed it.

"I see," he murmured, one finger stroking his goatee. "So the Dawn Shard _does_ lie in King Raithwall's tomb." His hand dropped. "The marquis sympathizes with your plight, yet the Empire watches his every move. He can keep whispers of your 'abduction' silent for only so long."

"Yes," Ashe said earnestly, "but tell me, Vossler, what have you accomplished? Have you found the means to restore Dalmasca?"

"First, we must claim the Dawn Shard," he said evasively. "It all begins with that."

They marched well into the night. Daina spoke to no one about her misgivings, for what good would it do? Vaan and Penelo – they wouldn't understand. The sky pirates – Balthier had made it clear he was in this for the money, nothing more, and wherever he went, Fran followed. Lady Ashe walked alongside Vossler as she had always done, obviously relieved to have him back.

Basch . . .

She just couldn't say anything. Not even to him. All she could do was wait, and watch, and protect Ashe should danger threaten.


	27. Destiny's March

Everything was sand and rust, sun and scorching wind. They slept through the hottest part of the day, and resumed traveling when the sun began its slow descent.

Daina walked with her fingers running lightly over the rusted railing, her eyes trained on the expanse of heaving yellow-blue sandsea. It crested like waves, sending sprays of sand rather than sea foam, and she thought it eerily beautiful despite the lingering smell of decaying metal and congealing oil.

"What's down there?" Vaan asked.

"Looks like a cavern," Daina said when she and Penelo joined him, staring down at the bank of real sand and the orifice in the rocky cliff face. It had the look of a place that never saw sunlight, protected by the cliff's overhang.

"Creepy," Vaan muttered. Something green and deep red paced in the opening, but never ventured onto the hot sands. The dark colors seemed menacing after so many hours of brightness. Daina couldn't tell what the thing was.

"Really creepy," Penelo agreed with a shiver.

"Let's keep moving," Daina said. "Our route does not lie that way."

They made it to the next section without incident, the uniformity of the endless series of oil rigs and bridges making everyone feel as if they hadn't moved at all. Daina drifted to the edge again, her eyes straining to pick out something, some kind of landmark, to prove that they weren't caught in some hellish loop of jagd. Nothing.

Except a shadow, moving faster than she could run, streaking over the sandsea.

She looked up with a shout of warning, and then ducked as the wyvern screamed in over her head. The creature, blinded at some point in the past by the mask over its eyes, missed its mark when Vossler picked up Ashe and lunged out of the way. The wyvern careened into a storage tank. Its leathery wings whipped up a gritty windstorm as it clawed for the air again.

Fran let loose a hail of arrows, finding the soft spots in its belly, in the joints where wings met shoulders. Keening, the wyvern crashed into the bridge where Daina was standing. It thrashed with taloned feet and wings, keeping all swords at bay. Balthier took aim and fired, opening up a bloody hole in the beast's chest.

In agony, the wyvern flipped over, serpentine neck and tail slamming into the bridge. Daina, avoiding it, got caught on the wrong side, separated from the platform and her friends by the wyvern's bulk.

With a gut-wrenching groan, the bridge's supports snapped. More rust than iron, it couldn't hold the wyvern's agonized weight and began to sink.

Daina whipped out the ashura, hacking and slicing at the beast's limbs, and when it recoiled with cries of pain, she climbed right over it, nimble as a wyrdhare.

"Take my hand!" Basch yelled.

Daina scrambled past the dying wyvern's head, and then Basch's larger hand closed on her wrist right when the bridge gave way. She thought he'd saved her, but it was as if they'd been caught in a graviga well. The sand and the rust beneath their boots gave him no traction, and instead of pulling Daina to safety, she ended up pulling him over the edge when the bridge disappeared beneath her feet.

The wyvern's carcass and the bridge splashed into the sandsea, and the two humes plunged in after. Daina hit bottom a split second later, and launched herself skyward. The sea was shallow here! They must be near another solid bank.

It wasn't like water. To her dismay, she found she wouldn't float. Not properly, anyway. Fortunately, having grown up in a land of lakes, she could hold her breath for a very long time. She swam in the direction of the waves, letting them push her closer to shore, until she staggered out, encrusted in sand. Basch climbed out after her, shaking sand out of his wheat gold hair. It showered off him in a sparkling rain.

"Are you all right?" Ashe called. Daina could see her, a shadowy shape against the low sun, leaning dangerously far over the railing.

"Yes!" Daina shouted back. "But I don't think we can get back to you."

It was true. She didn't see any ramps here, any way to reach the rusting platform and the princess. She did see another cave mouth, however, and her stomach sank like the bridge.

"Vossler!" Basch inhaled sand and coughed. His rough voice went coarser. "We'll have to find another route. Go on without us."

"All right, Basch." Vossler saluted them. "Keep your wits about you!"

The two knights spent the next several minutes scrubbing sand out of their hair and clothing, until the noise of their friends' passing faded. Then, Basch looked at Daina, and Daina crossed her arms over her middle and shrugged. More sand fell. She sighed. She'd never get it all off, unless she jumped naked into a lake. "Now what?" she asked.

Like her, he looked around the bank. The cave mouth practically jumped out at them, beckoning. He nodded at it. "The Zertinan Caverns. It's a vast network that honeycombs the Jagd Yensa. There are entrances all over the Nam-Yensa Sandsea, and into the Ogir-Yensa. Our best bet lies through there."

"I've never been one to gamble," she said. "I need to know all possible outcomes. I would never have been able to keep Her Majesty safe without that. We have no idea where this tunnel leads, or if it even leads anywhere."

"It isn't possible to know everything," he said.

"So Vayne taught me."

"The Fates have us here for a reason. I prefer to do everything in my power to save myself, rather than wait for rescue that will never come."

She grimaced. "All right. Underground it is."

Together, they cautiously approached the cave mouth. No trace so far of the green something she'd seen with Vaan, and they descended the sandy slope. The daylight quickly died, but ahead of them, a circle of sunlight pooled beneath a crevasse in the cavern's roof.

"Thank you," she said, eyes on the sunlight. "For trying to save me."

A pause. "You're welcome."

Delicious shivers ran through her at the sound of his low, rough voice. Though she never looked at him, she was aware of him, especially when the first slime dropped from the ceiling and his sword flashed out, beating the glow-in-the-dark amorph back. Her kogarasumaru joined in, and they slew not one, but five slimes in a row. The knight and the lady knight traversed long, dark tunnels and yawning caverns, some of which were filled with shafts of dimming sunlight. Many falls of sand from above, or pits of swirling sand draining downward, forced them to backtrack, but Basch seemed to have a compass in his head and kept them moving west.

Although there was no food and no water, Daina could not help trusting that he would find a way to rejoin their friends.


	28. Temptation Eluded

Daina discovered the pool, guarded by horned speartongue toads. Green, they were. Green and mean. The horned monsters were what Vaan had seen, but by then, Daina, tired, hungry, and filthy, was feeling meaner. She and Basch dispatched the toads and then stared down into the pool.

Real water, in a bed of rock, fringed by spiky desert succulents, their large pink blooms sending perfume into the air. No sand.

"You should use it first," Basch said, sheathing his sword. Then, without waiting for an answer, he turned and walked back up the slope until he rounded the corner and was gone.

Grateful for his courtesy, she solemnly unbuckled her sword belt. Then, she removed the green coat, shaking it out over the plants. Her boots and gloves went next, and her shorts – how could that much sand have collected in them? Daina snorted on a laugh. Stripped down to her underwear, she knelt at the edge of the pool and scooped water over her arms, her neck and face, her belly and legs. She wanted badly to submerge, but with nothing to dry herself with and night only moments away, she restrained the impulse. It was cool in the cavern, the water colder still.

With reluctance, she put her sandy uniform back on. A change of clothes would have been marvelous, but stupid to wish for. Besides, her hair was a hopeless mass of sand. She finger-combed the strands as best she could while she climbed the slope after Basch.

"Your turn," she told him cheerfully, and then settled down to wait.

* * *

Since it was foolish to go blundering around the caverns in the dark, they built a fire and examined their various cuts and scrapes.

"I don't know how I got this one," Daina laughed, showing him her elbow. An ugly gash ran from the lower end of her triceps halfway down her forearm. "Now that I know it's there it's going to start hurting like the abyss."

"Let me see." Basch took her arm in gentle fingers, applying potion to it with a wad of cloth that had, somehow, survived without the coating of sand that had ruined everything else.

It stung, and she winced. "I was right. That hurts."

"I'm sorry," he said with a chuckle. He finished his work and released her. "Lucky we have potions on hand for this. That might have been a nasty scar."

Her skin tingled where he'd touched her, and she hugged her arm to her side. She couldn't help glancing at the wicked scar across his brow. Potions and phoenix downs were only viable if used immediately. Someone dead more than a few minutes could not be revived by phoenix magick. A wound as deep as that one must have been, when left untended, inevitably scarred.

"Don't put that away yet," she said, reaching for the potion bottle. "You missed a spot."

She'd seen it when he turned his head, his wheat gold beard catching the firelight: A nick on his cheekbone, still weeping scarlet. As intent on her work as he had been, she wiped the blood away with her thumb and dabbed a little potion into it, watching as it healed to a thin pink line in the firelight. She sat back. "There, all done."

When she looked away from the cut she found him staring at her. Calm amber eyes, just an arm length away. And that scar. It drew her closer, her curiosity guiding her fingers. He let her trace the scar with her fingertips, across his forehead, through the eyebrow, and down to his ear. An inch or two south, and he'd have lost an eye. As her touch lingered along his jaw, his eyes slid partway shut. The golden beard was softer than she expected.

He put his hand over hers, holding it to his face.

Daina quit breathing. She hadn't meant anything by her exploring. Nevertheless, she couldn't squelch her physical reaction, with the plane of his cheek warm beneath her palm, and his other hand weaving into her hair. Her entire body lit up like one of the dancing orange flames at her feet when he kissed her.

Oh, she thought. _Oh_.

After that, she couldn't think at all. Her eyes closed and she kissed him back, feeling the tugs in her hair and his lips hard on hers. A hand ran down her side, settling in the curve of her waist. Warmth zipped up and down her spine and she melted against him.

Then, something terrible happened. The kiss stopped.

She could feel that, too, his drawing away. Collecting himself. Putting space between them, two feet wide but as impassable as a ravine.

He was looking at the fire now, determinedly. When he spoke, his low voice was rough in a whole new way. "Forgive me."

Dumbstruck, she stared at him, unable to fathom this sudden change of heart.

"I'm old enough to be your father," he explained with a self-deprecating smile.

Daina frowned, and thought about that. It was true. He was twice her age. What did that mean, truly? His thirty-six years to her eighteen? He had already become an adult by the time she had been born; had lost his kingdom; fled to Dalmasca. He'd worked his way through the ranks to Captain of the Order of Knights, and had likely loved someone before. Perhaps many someones. His knowledge and experience came from nearly two decades of time that Daina had yet to traverse.

But, she decided and spoke, "Does it matter?"

He was not her father, and she didn't think of him that way. She was an adult also, and had her own experience and input that she need not be ashamed of, even though she was not yet twenty. Plus, he was obviously attracted to her, and she to him. Smiling, Daina met his eyes.

What she saw there staggered her worse than an amphora of Bacchus's wine.

It _did_ matter to him. It mattered very much, so much that she could see he wasn't going to allow himself to get that close to her again.

No, she thought, aghast. That wasn't fair. How could he do that to her? He must know how she felt. There wasn't any possible way to hide it, not after a kiss like that.

She loved him. She thought he had come to care for her, too.

Or had she misunderstood?

Her hands curled into fists. She hadn't misunderstood. That fire inside him – she _hadn't_. So. Did she want to push it? Was it a battle she could win?

_No_, she thought again. _I can't make him love me. Not like that_.

Mortified, Daina drew back. There was no sense in prolonging this conversation.

Keeping her voice light, she suggested they get some sleep. "We should find the others early tomorrow so Vaan doesn't get himself killed looking for us."

"Agreed," Basch said quietly, relieved.

Daina got up and moved to the other side of the fire. Inside, her heart was breaking.


	29. Alley of Muted Sighs

Sleep did not come easily to her, and when she did finally sleep, she dreamed. Busy dreams that tossed her out of unconsciousness like throwing out the trash. She awoke with a start, her cheek in sand, and her eyelashes full of the ash from their dying fire.

Feeling a thousand years old, she pushed herself into a sitting position. Basch was still asleep, curled up on his side, his head pillowed on his folded arm.

It hurt to look at him. She meandered to the pool of still, clear water and sat at its edge. There, at last, she could cry. She hugged her knees to her chest and buried her face in them, and let the tears come.

* * *

If Basch had behaved differently after the night before, Daina might not have been such a wreck.

But he didn't. Since neither of them was in the habit of talking much, their silence wasn't unusual. A little chitchat might have changed everything. When he did speak, he was still courteous and so terribly gentle she was in constant danger of bursting into tears. If she hung back, he led the way without complaint. If she quickened her stride, he drifted to the rear and allowed her to take point, as if they were equals.

Not once did either of them mention what had happened by the fire. It was a mistake, one that couldn't be forgotten soon enough.

Daina couldn't bear to walk beside him, and she kept her head down, veiling her face with her lily-blonde hair. She was such a child.

And that was exactly the problem.

* * *

Whether the Landisian Fates had directed them or not, they exited the Zertinan Caverns in a secluded section of the Nam-Yensa Sandsea. While Daina blinked to accustom her eyes to the direct sunlight, Basch spoke to a traveling merchant named Dyce and learned that Lady Ashe and the others had passed this way already, and met with the fearsome avian, the garuda, and defeated it at the entrance to King Raithwall's tomb.

"I'll gladly go with you through the Valley of the Dead," Dyce said. "There's treasure in those ruins, and I can't say as I'd mind a pittance of it. No, normally I'd never go near, not me. Too dangerous! By the way, do you need anything?" With the last, he opened his saddlebags and displayed his wares.

Dyce's chocobo could travel faster than the two knights, of course, but he liked hearing his own voice so much that he dismounted and walked with them so he could comfortably continue talking. Daina was grateful for his cheerful presence. With eyes shining in excitement, Dyce showed them where the battle with the garuda had taken place. He then waved them into the opened tomb with a shouted, "Good luck to you! I'll be here if you need me!"

The tomb, so much less friendly than Dyce, greeted them with a flame-eyed demon wall. The tomb was a frightening, ancient, dark, and musty place. A place that did not welcome visitors. They made their way slowly, their senses protesting this return to gloom after the blinding glare of the sun. The demon wall's two red eyes lit up a face out of a nightmare, washing their surroundings in bloody light. Groaning and grinding, the stone came to life when they stepped onto the suspended walkway in front of it, brandishing giant scimitars, and dragged itself toward them with enormous centipede legs. Its bulk completely blocked off the bridge. Daina divined its intent instantly. It meant to crush them against the far wall.

Daina and Basch sprinted down the walkway ahead of the juggernaut, bursting into another antechamber and the remains of a second demon wall, dust still hanging on the air. The work of their friends, no doubt. In the first room, she heard the living demon wall laboriously returning to its previous position to await the next trespass.

Basch surveyed the destroyed wall, and then sheathed his sword, his eyes tracing something in the dusty floor. "We're close," was all he said.

As usual, he was right. Daina heard their voices first.

"It wounds me to look on as they pillage so solemn a place," Vossler said.

"Yet without help, you and I are nothing. Is this not so?" Ashe said reasonably. "He thinks ever and always on his own profit. Assure him of it, and he shall remain true to our cause."

They were talking about Balthier, doubtlessly. Daina rushed up the stairs. She reached the top just as Vossler said, "I do not share your Majesty's trust."

"We will continue this later," Ashe said with an impatient wave of her hand. She turned away from Vossler and saw Daina. The smile that suffused her Lady's face snagged Vossler's attention, and then Vaan saw Daina, too.

"You made it!" he yelled gleefully.

Penelo shyly approached Daina and hugged her. "I'm so glad you're okay."

Was she okay? Daina couldn't answer that. She felt like some piece of her had gone missing. Somewhere behind her, Basch inquired after the princess's health.

Balthier, examining a wall sconce across the room, had not joined in the noisy welcoming. Fran, however, looked up, and their eyes met. Understanding softened the viera's expression, and Daina blushed.

"Now we should concern ourselves with finding the Dawn Shard," Ashe said, almost dreamily. "It sleeps, in waiting. Somewhere deep within."

"How can you be sure?" Vossler asked.

Ashe started forward, her body canted as if she were a marionette, guided by a puppeteer's strings. "I can hear its call."

* * *

Traveling with seven other people offered advantages that a single companion lacked. Daina chose to walk with Penelo and Fran, listening to the viera's friendly lecture on Mist and magicks. Once, Fran put her long-nailed hand on Daina's shoulder and then looked at Basch's back with an encouraging smile. Daina only shook her head. It was impossible, and it was over. Basch did not want her. The best thing she could do now was endeavor to close off that part of her heart. Life would go on.

Raithwall's tomb hindered them at every possible step with ancient traps, puzzles, and undead beasties. Shambling zombie mages and squawking skull warriors harassed them in the underground maze. The dark elemental ashura proved useless, but the kogarasumaru was more than a match for the undead, as well as the statues-come-to-life such as ragohs, intentional magickal guardians, and mutated tallows, the eternal flames at their tops hinting at the fire elementals trapped inside the melted metal of their original forms.

Perhaps that was why she wasn't surprised when they walked into a circular chamber filled with twinkling, fog-like Mist that housed a two-headed, four-armed, cloven-hoofed statue on a throne, and the statue stood and challenged them.


	30. The Lost Way

The gigas brandished a two-bladed axe, fire rippling down its gray skin and burning red mane, and then it attacked. Vossler, Vaan, and Basch rushed to engage the monster before it could endanger Ashe. Daina, who yesterday would have surged in fearlessly with her sword, hesitated. That wasn't like her at all, but she still felt so turned around and inside out and it made her weak.

Unconcerned with the three swordsmen, the gigas unleashed a firaja blast that blew everybody flat or into the walls, including Daina.

The man part of the two-headed gigas slung great gouts of oil that the beast part set aflame. Fran and Penelo reclaimed control of the battle, flinging water spells at the fiery gigas. The three men kept it at bay with physical strikes, but Daina couldn't keep her head together long enough to truly help them, and instead stayed by Ashe, to block as much of the continued bursts of firaja as she could.

It was a hot, slippery struggle in the bowels of Raithwall's tomb, but Ashe had come too far to quit now. Ferocious as a beast herself, she struck the killing blow.

When the gigas Belias yielded its name and the fight, it bowed down to the princess before it condensed into a Misty crystal, to sleep until summoned again.

Panting softly, Fran shook her ponytail over her shoulder. "In vainglory they arose, shouting challenges at the gods. But prevail they did not. Their doom it was to walk the Mist until Time's end. A legend of the nu mou."

"My family tells a story of the Dynast-King and an esper," Ashe said wonderingly. The Mist crystal glistered in her palm. "The story goes that in his youth, the Dynast-King defeated a mighty gigas for which the gods took heed of him. Thereafter, it was bound to him in thralldom."

Balthier mopped lingering oil off his sleeve with a handkerchief. "So all this time it's been here guarding the Dynast-King's treasure."

"Not so," Ashe disagreed, her gray eyes wide. "The esper _is_ the Dynast-King's treasure."

"That's your treasure?" Balthier asked, sounding incredulous.

"In this esper we now command rests a power whose worth is beyond any measure."

"Is that so?" He looked angry, cheated, but he attempted to shrug it off. "Call me old-fashioned, but I was hoping for a treasure whose worth we _could_ measure."

Nobody had anything to say to that. Dissatisfied on all fronts, they moved on, until they reached the final chamber. And the Dawn Shard. Clockwork gears spun ponderously, light glimmering off polished metal and marble. The whole chamber clicked and whirred.

It seemed sacreligious to walk there, and most of them paused in the doorway.

"What's wrong?" Basch asked in an undertone.

He was staring at Vossler, who was staring at the stone, but Vossler ignored him.

"Your Majesty, we must go," he said.

Ashe nodded and stepped forward, climbing the stairs to the shard's pedestal, and the stone began to glow with a pale blue light. Then, she froze. "What?"

From her vantage point, Daina couldn't see anything that might trouble her Lady, but standing there, looking at Ashe's slender form surrounded by Raithwall's glory, she felt the strength of her vows rising up, filling her, leaving no room for anything else. Ashe had sounded surprised and apprehensive. Daina must protect her.

Hand to the kogarasumaru's hilt, Daina started forward also.

Vossler grabbed her. Not gently, and with both hands.

"What are you doing?" Daina hissed. She squirmed, but his grip was too strong. "You're hurting me!"

"Vossler." Basch's face darkened, gaining a dangerous edge. He advanced on them, every muscle taut.

"Rasler . . ." Ashe whispered.

They looked at her, all of them, but Daina still couldn't see anything unusual. When Ashe made a sudden grabbing motion, as if to catch someone's arm, Vossler's hands finally relaxed; the princess held the Dawn Shard.

"You will be avenged," Ashe whispered.

Daina pushed away from Vossler, rubbing her arms sullenly. Basch's brief, unexplainable moment of protectiveness passed, and the ravine gaped between them.

"Let us go," Vossler said again, hovering at Ashe's shoulder. Lady Ashe, distracted, allowed him to lead her out of the tomb via the reactivated way stone devices that teleported them back to the entrance. Vaan bolted into the daylight first, his exuberance undampened by anything that had happened inside the tomb.

Then he looked up. His mouth dropped open.

A fleet of Archadian ships flew overhead, operating flawlessly, impossibly, in the jagd. Before anybody could fall back, several valefors descended to the sand, and when their doors burst open, a score of Imperial marksmen surrounded the little warband. A pair of troops tackled and disarmed Vaan first. This time, Daina managed to stay by her Lady as they were forced into the valefors at gunpoint for transport. With Ashe at her side, she could handle anything.

Onboard the _Leviathan_, Judge Ghis met them bare-headed, his droopy eyes and wide smile as disgusting as ever. "Such a tremendous honor to again be graced with your presence, Majesty. You left us with such great dispatch upon our last encounter that I must confess I had begun to worry that we may have given some cause for offense."

"Such a heartfelt display of remorse," Ashe said impatiently. "Now what is it you want?"

Ghis's slimy smile disappeared. "I want you to give me the nethicite."

"The nethicite?" Penelo squeaked. She hid her hands behind her back.

"That is a base imitation!" Ghis shouted at her. "We seek Raithwall's legacy. The ancient relics of the Dynast-King: Deifacted nethicite. Did you not tell them, Captain Azelas?"

Ashe gasped, and Daina, unable to keep silent any longer, whirled on Vossler. "Tell us what?" she snarled.

"Majesty," he said quietly, "he speaks of the Dawn Shard. That is the nethicite."

"Are you mad, Vossler?" Basch demanded of his one-time friend angrily. Dark night to sunny day, Daina thought dizzily, in more ways than one.

Vossler's eyes narrowed. "If we are to save Dalmasca, we must accept the truth. I will fight this profitless battle no more!"

"Captain Azelas has struck a wise bargain," Ghis interjected lazily. "In return for the Dawn Shard the Empire will permit Lady Ashe to reclaim her throne, and the kingdom of Dalmasca will be restored. Think on it. An entire kingdom for a stone. You must admit, 'tis more than a fair exchange."

"And when all is said and done, your master will have another pet," Balthier put in.

Ghis didn't seem to like this.

"Lady Ashe, let us take him for the people of Dalmasca. Your Majesty wallows in indecision on the peril of their heads!" Ghis drew his broadsword with a ring of metal on metal, and put the blade to Balthier's neck. "And his shall be the first to fall."


	31. Invitation to Heresy

"Well, at least your sword is to the point," the handsome sky pirate scoffed. He stood almost lounging over the blade, his head high and his expression arrogant.

A dreadful silence followed this. Ashe, her pretty face pinched in fury, ungraciously handed the shard to Ghis.

Ghis took it, tilting it this way and that, to watch its eldritch glow flutter like liquid, and turned away from them. "To think the relics of the Dynast-King were deifacted nethicite. Dr. Cid will be beside himself."

"What did you say?" Balthier exclaimed, but a soldier shoved a rifle in his chest and he backed up, scowling.

"Captain Azelas, take them to _Shiva_," the judge said in his deceptively lazy voice. "They should have leave to return to Rabanastre soon."

Vossler, his face a stranger's, and with the help of Imperials, escorted the group off the Dreadnought _Leviathan_ and onto the light airship class cruiser, the _Shiva_. Once again shackled, Daina shuffled after the others, disheartened, mentally berating herself for not seeing Vossler's treachery sooner. The great Captain Azelas was a traitor. It was a recent transformation, of that she was sure. It made her sick.

"When we return to Dalmasca," he was saying behind her, "we can announce that you are alive and well. I will then continue our negotiations with the Empire. I believe Larsa is the key. He'll listen to us. We should trust him."

Ashe's footsteps stopped, and she venomously asked, "Who are you, Vossler, to talk of trust?"

Daina retraced her own steps and went to her Lady's side. Fine tremors rippled through Ashe's body, and Daina recognized the signs of someone trying, with all of her might, not to cry. She touched Ashe's arm and began to lead her away. At first, the princess resisted, but then she went quickly, without assistance, her back straight.

When Ashe was out of earshot, Vossler lowered his head and softly answered her: "A son of Dalmasca."

His hands hung limp at his sides. Daina, her hands cuffed, turned her back on him. He hadn't trusted her at all, but not for the reason she'd thought. He'd gone and done this on his own. Why had he not confided in her, talked about his ideas before acting on them?

A new thought occurred to her.

Was it because he thought her too young to be of any use or help?

She ran to catch up with Ashe and the others, but when she did, she found a bit of a traffic jam in the corridor. Vaan leaned uncertainly over Fran. The viera was bent double, her reddish eyes wide and staring, and she was making little moans and whimpers, as if she couldn't breathe. "Such heat," she groaned. "The Mist – it's burning!"

She put her hands to her head. Daina and Penelo flocked to her worriedly. By this time, she'd gotten everyone's attention.

A soldier approached, shouting, "You, stand!" He went to touch her, to grab her ears, but a blast of _something_ sent him reeling backward. A wavering aura engulfed the agonized viera. Mist.

Vossler charged up to them. "Hold her down!"

He was too late. Fran jerked upright as if she'd been electrocuted, and she screamed, showing every sharp tooth. She wrenched her wrists apart, shattering her cuffs, and then leapt into the air. She lashed out with her sharp stiletto heel, kicking one soldier in the chest, punching a hole through his armor, and then she jumped to the other, slashing at him with her claws.

"What's wrong with her?" Penelo cried.

Balthier sauntered up to the girl, adjusting his sleeve with one hand, his lock picks dangling in the other. "I always knew Fran didn't take well to being tied up," he drawled. "I just never knew how much." He turned to Ashe, cocking an eyebrow. "How about you?"

Ashe didn't hesitate. She held out her wrists so he could release her. "I like Fran's idea. Let's get out of here."

Fran, consumed by her inexplicable berserker high, nevertheless followed them when Vaan bolted for the _Shiva_'s cockpit. She seemed to recognize friend from foe, although she lacked the ability to speak.

Vossler loomed in front of Vaan, blocking the way with his greatsword, and he bellowed, "No farther! Sky pirates! The future of Dalmasca will not be stolen!"

Basch pushed forward, mindful of Vaan, and confronted Vossler silently.

"Why do this, Basch?" the other asked. "This struggle is futile. You must know where it leads!"

"I do know. All too well."

Basch drew his sword, the curved mythril blade of the Order.

The next few moments were some of the most distasteful in Daina's life. Vaan, Penelo, and Balthier stuck with the berserking Fran, taking down Imperials as they appeared, but Daina drew her kogarasumaru and pitched a battle with Vossler, who was her captain, Ashe's protector, and Basch's friend. The four of them struggled, nobody holding back.

Vossler was truly an excellent swordsman. He smashed through Ashe's defense and flung her away, weaponless, and then struck Daina a blow that lifted her off her feet and deposited her, winded, some distance from where she had started. He was simply too strong for the two women, his expression hard and detached.

But he could not defeat Basch.

The blond man sent the greatsword spinning across the floor. Vossler struggled for breath, kneeling in front of Basch, blood pooling around his legs. Ashe and Daina, supporting each other, merely looked on.

At last, Fran recovered her senses, although she was severely weakened. Helped along by Balthier, she and the orphans ran toward a valefor in the launch bay.

"Ashe, let's go," Balthier called.

Ashe looked once more at her knights.

"Go," Daina urged.

Full of sorrow, Ashe followed Balthier.

"All I have done," Vossler said with effort, "I've ever thought of Dalmasca first."

"I know you do. I would ne'er gainsay your loyalty," Basch told him gently.

"Look on what my haste has wrought." Vossler chuckled tiredly, blood bubbling on his lips. "Did I act too quick? Or was your return too late? I can serve her no more. You must take up my charge."

After a moment, Basch turned away. He ran, sweeping Daina along with him, and they left Captain Vossler York Azelas, slumped unconscious – or dead – behind.


	32. The Crucible

The valefor launched just in time. An explosion onboard the _Leviathan_ ballooned out and engulfed the _Shiva_. Their small craft yawed as Balthier struggled to keep them ahead of the destruction.

"This might get a little dicey!" he grunted as a shockwave tossed them all starboard.

Fran, cradled in Penelo's lap, lifted her head weakly. "The Mist, it manifests now."

"Is that what you call this?" Vaan exclaimed, nabbing Daina before she pitched headlong onto the floor. Boiling clouds rolled toward the heart of the explosion, gathering like the ocean before a tidal wave. The erstwhile Dreadnought transformed into a supernova with an aureole of flame-colored strands, which spun and roiled like serpents. No trace of any airships remained, except for them, tossed about on the storm winds of Mist.

Penelo suddenly pointed. "What's that?"

Daina squinted against the glare of magickal power. Something like a tiny nuclear spark in the center of the conflagration beckoned.

"I think it's the Dawn Shard!" Ashe leaned over Balthier's shoulder to get a better look at it, and he raised his eyebrows at her.

"Then what are we waiting for?" Balthier skillfully steered their little craft through the plasmatic inferno.

Vaan braced himself against the bulkhead, one arm looped around Daina's waist to keep her steady; Penelo tended to Fran; Ashe, her face fierce, hovered near the sky pirate, helping to navigate.

That left Basch, standing alone. Unhappy. Withdrawn.

Tucked against Vaan's side, Daina watched Basch through the curtain of her hair, traced every well-known, beloved line of his face. His hair, softly curling. His mouth, the corners turned down. His thoughts, hidden. She wanted so badly to go to him, to make him see her, to bring him back from whatever sad place had currently claimed him.

"It's falling!" Ashe cried, her body tensed as if she meant to leap out if the ship after the shard.

The valefor dipped violently beneath Daina's feet and she grabbed Vaan's vest for balance. He didn't notice. He seemed too wrapped up in some daydream of flying his own ship, eyes locked straight ahead, a fierce grin on his lips.

A day later, they retrieved the Dawn Shard out of the Nabreus Deadlands, its smoky blue facets dull in Ashe's hands. This was an event that threw a colossal melancholy over both Ashe and Daina, for the Deadlands were all that was left of Nabudis, and their Lord Prince. Daina remained aboard the valefor, refusing to lay her eyes on the waste.

The _Leviathan_ and the 8th royal fleet were gone, as were Judge Ghis and Vossler, consumed by the shard. Ashe's little band was free, but aimless, so they returned to Rabanastre to recuperate. Daina smuggled them to the Resistance hideout in Lowtown.

And promptly got into an affray with Balzac.

It started when he intercepted them at the entrance. He leapt off his crate and threw his arms around Daina, burying his face in her hair. "You're safe!"

Momentarily stunned by his unreserve, she couldn't use the next few seconds to tell him to keep his hands to himself. He started firing questions at her, still holding her possessively. The only question she caught was, "The captain?"

She inadvertently glanced at Basch, who also held that title, and Balzac's eyes narrowed.

"Captain Azelas is lost," she said dully. She extricated herself – or tried to. His hand clamped on her wrist.

"We've had no word here. Rumors abound of the marquis's sudden malady. He's fled Bhujerba. And who are they that you bring here? A traitor and thieves, by the look of them."

"_I_ brought them," Ashe said, stepping forward in such a way that Balzac was forced to give ground. Her gray eyes were as hard as granite. "We will discuss our news inside, unless there is some reason you want all of Rabanastre to hear you."

Balzac mumbled an apology, but was smart enough not to point out that guarding the hideout's entrance was his job, and Ashe strode by him as if he didn't exist. After Vaan and Penelo passed through, Daina jerked her wrist free and followed, hurrying to catch up to her Lady.

So did Balzac, signaling his seeq friend to keep his station. "Daina, wait," he said, running to head her off.

Ashe glanced over her shoulder at them. Basch paused, too, his expression as impassible as Daina had ever seen it. She felt it though, all the awkwardness of being trapped between an ex-suitor and the man she'd kissed – so willingly! – two days ago, and she was immediately furious at Balzac for putting her in this situation. She turned to Basch, meeting his amber eyes boldly, refusing to show weakness.

"Please see to My Lady's needs," she said. "I will be there shortly."

"As you wish," he answered gently.

"Thank you." Daina kept her eyes on the floor as she waited for her friends to leave, so she wouldn't have to see their curious or (Faram forbid) amused looks. Then, she spun on her heel and stalked into the kitchens. It wasn't the right time of day for anybody else to be in there, so she was sure of some privacy.

"Daina –" Balzac started, but she cut him off with a snarl.

"Just what do you think you're doing? You have no right to question me so."

He gaped at her. Then he shouted, "Don't I? You ran off to no one knows where with a known traitor, and now you tell me that our captain has fallen!"

"Captain Azelas betrayed us," she snapped. "Every one of us, you, me, all of Dalmasca! sold to the Empire in the name of peace. He gave his life for it. Captain Ronsenburg risked everything to bring Amalia and I safely through his heinous deceit. What think you of traitors now?"

"Methinks you're overly friendly with _Captain_ Ronsenburg," he sneered.

"That is none of your concern. You don't own me, and you don't have my affection!"

Balzac flushed red. "So it _is_ him!"

"Excuse me?"

"You've left _me_ for _him_."

"_Left_ you?" she yelled. "You and I haven't been together in a twelvemonth. You're living in a fantasy world, Balzac. I'll thank you to leave me alone!"

She was so angry she thought she might laugh and cry at the same time, and settled instead for running blindly out of the kitchens.


	33. Field of the Fallen Lord

"So you heard that." Daina's cheeks felt hot enough to temper steel.

"I think the whole North Sprawl heard it," Penelo said, her expression apologetic. "Are you okay?"

"No." Daina collapsed backward on her cot, her arms crossed over her face. There went her reputation. She could just die.

Night came late to the desert, but in Lowtown, day came not at all. Ashe had retired to her room, to think or to sleep, dismissing Daina's services until the morrow, and Daina had retreated to the adjacent room she now shared with both Penelo and Fran.

"It's okay," Penelo said from her cot. "He didn't say anything."

No need to ask who she meant. Of course he didn't say anything. He wouldn't. He was a knight. Daina sighed and sat up, restless fingers undoing her long braid.

"Balzac – was he a boyfriend of yours?" Penelo asked hesitantly.

"Nothing so serious," Daina admitted. "I liked him for a little while. Not like –" There, she stopped, mortified.

"Your heart does not lead you wrong," Fran said in her strange, thick accent.

"My heart should not lead me at all," Daina countered. _And it is his heart that I cannot be sure of,_ she added silently.

The conversation ended there. When she finally fell asleep, long after her companions' breathing slowed, her pillow was wet.

* * *

"So it was the Dawn Shard that brought down the Imperial Fleet," Basch said.

Such was Fran's explanation of her strange behavior aboard _Shiva_. They were in the meeting room, the seven of them, all subdued and bleary-eyed. Daina sat at Ashe's left hand, Basch stood to her right. Penelo also sat with them, while Fran perched on the edge of the table.

Balthier paused in his pacing, his eyebrows raised. "You know your stuff."

"Destructive power of such force – I've seen it once before." He leveled a grief-laden look at Ashe and Daina. "You know of what I speak."

"Nabudis." Ashe played with her wedding rings. The one on her middle finger was too large, and she touched it lovingly.

Vaan took a seat behind Penelo. Everyone listened as Basch continued speaking.

"The capital of Old Nabradia – Lord Rasler's fatherland. During the invasion, a division of Imperials entered the city. There was a mighty explosion. Friend and foe died alike. Something was there – one of the Dynast-King's relics."

"The Midlight Shard was in Nabradia," Daina confirmed heavily. Only Fate had kept her and Lord Rasler out of the royal city that day.

"More nethicite," Balthier commented. "Well, no wonder they invaded."

"That ridiculous war," Ashe said, reaching for the Dawn Shard, which had gone black and dormant, "the trap at the treaty-signing – all because Vayne wanted power. He must not be allowed to claim the nethicite. The Empire must never hold it."

"Oh?" Balthier crossed his arms and cocked his head. "They already do. The Dusk Shard, and most likely the Midlight Shard, too. Besides, can't they manufact nethicite now?"

Ashe stood up, her fire undimmed. "Very well, then the path set before us is clear. We'll use the Dawn Shard to fight them! Dalmasca does not forget kindness, nor ill deed done. With sword in hand she aids her allies. Sword in hand, she lays to rest her foes. This nethicite I hold must be my sword. I will avenge those who have died. And the Empire will know remorse."

Vaan leaned forward, his eyebrows pinched. "You even know how to use it?"

"I . . ." Ashe looked at the stone in her hand, and once more touched her rings. The answer was _no_. None of them did.

"The garif may know," Fran said unexpectedly, and quietly. She turned away from them all, as if unsure she should be sharing her knowledge with humes. "The garif people live by the old ways. Magicite lore is a part of their culture. They may hear it. The cry of the nethicite's power. Whispers of the stone's menace."

"Dangerous though it be, what we need now is power," Ashe said, rounding the table. "Should we declare Dalmasca free without the means to defend our claim, the Empire would crush us. You must take me to meet with the garif."

"They live beyond Ozmone Plain." Fran looked at Balthier, who joined them.

"Not exactly close," he said.

"Compensation – is that what you want?" Ashe scowled.

"Straight to the point, aren't we. I like that." Smooth as steel, he smirked. "Compensation? How about the ring."

Daina's chair scraped as she stood. Balthier! He was like a boy tormenting a girl to get her attention. How dare he ask for such a thing, which belonged to her fallen Lord and prince?

For the first time, Ashe showed something like fear. "This? Isn't there something else?"

"No one's forcing you," he said coolly. He held out his hand.

Slowly, like a woman underwater, Ashe set the Dawn Shard on the table, held Rasler's wedding ring between thumb and forefinger, hesitated, and slipped it off. Then she dropped it in Balthier's palm.

He looked at it, and then closed his hand and told her, "I'll give it back to you. As soon as I find something more valuable."

Ashe marched away without responding, leaving him standing there. She exited the room, and Penelo, Basch, and Daina started to follow her.

"What do you mean, 'something more valuable'?" Vaan wanted to know. He frowned at Balthier.

"Hard to say," the pirate glibly answered, falling into step behind Daina and Basch. "I'll know when I find it."

* * *

In the Muthru Bazaar, while they shopped for upgraded weapons, armor, spell scrolls, and supplies, Ashe asked about Vaan. "Who is he?"

Daina and Basch looked at each other. Four days had passed since the sinking of the _Leviathan_, and some of the pain had faded. They could speak to each other now with a semblance of normalcy, each gripping their vows tightly. The only knights left to Her Majesty, they stayed with her always, and Basch kept the princess between them.

"His elder brother enlisted in the war," Daina said. "It was Reks who brought news of the betrayal at Nalbina back to Rabanastre."

"I see," Ashe said, crossing her arms over her middle. She listened calmly while Basch related the true events in his own words, and when he finished, she looked at him with new respect, and perhaps trust.

They were unlikely allies, but that was how the disthroned princess and her loyal knights came to travel with a hume sky pirate and his viera partner, as well as two Dalmascan orphans, to Jahara, land of the garif.


	34. Throne Road

More than once in the days that followed, Daina witnessed Balthier's practiced, facetious gallantry soften to something more sincere when he spoke to Ashe, or did something for her. Ashe, of course, saw none of it, and never had much to say to him, so preoccupied was she with her task, and so Daina said nothing.

If Ashe's coldness bothered Balthier, he gave no sign of it. Something else lurked behind his knowing smirk, something that went deeper than his pirate trappings. He carried his good breeding around like a charm, while his eyes ever sought the freedom of the skies, and his words assured them of his mercenary heart.

Basch didn't seem to like Balthier's attentions to the princess, but his own manners kept him from interfering unless Her Highness requested it. At least for now.

In the evenings, when the rains on Giza Plains slackened, and later, the sun on Ozmone Plain sank behind the derelict bulks of airships downed ages past in some historic but forgotten battle, they made camp. During this community time, before they ate their evening meal, Daina sang. Although without accompaniment, her voice was strong and sweet. The appreciation of her audience eased her heartache.

In spite of the distance between them and her certainty that he did not care for her, she wanted Basch to notice her, to see his smile. He did, sometimes, when a particular song made him raise his head from his employment, but he never laid his courteousness aside long enough to give her any real hope.

Ashe's hope of assistance from the massive, masked garif died, also; they could not help her learn to wield the Dawn Shard. They did not know how, and the shard itself was used up, emptied of all Mist by the accident on the _Leviathan_.

To everyone's surprise, Ashe was not the only "hume-child" to seek the nethicite's answers, as Lord Larsa proved when he joined them that evening on the Great-chief's hill. He requested Ashe's attendance, and at a look from her Lady, Daina joined her. Larsa had a proposition.

"To Bur-Omisace?" Ashe repeated.

Larsa grinned. "I say we ought leave tomorrow. I was going to wait for my escort, but meeting you presents a great opportunity. This terrible war can be stopped, but I will need your help to do so."

"A war?"

"You know the Marquis Ondore leads a group of Insurgents – your pardon, he leads a large Resistance force against the Empire. Lady Ashe, neither of our countries can afford this now. The Rozarrian Empire would stir. They would aid the Resistance and use this aid as a pretext to declare war on Archadia, and Archadia would have no choice but to answer." Larsa reached for her hands, his small face earnest as he looked up into her eyes. "Let us go to Bur-Omisace. With the blessing of His Grace the Gran Kiltias Anastasis you may rightly wear your crown, and declare the restoration of the Kingdom of Dalmasca. As queen, you can call for peace between the Empire and Dalmasca, and stop Marquis Ondore."

"For peace?" Ashe took her hands away. "How dare you say that! The Empire attacked us, stole all we hold dear, and you would have me save them from war?"

"Dalmasca would be the battlefield!" Larsa exclaimed. "What if nethicite were used on Rabanastre? You know my brother would do this!"

Ashe made no reply, her expression belying her inner turmoil, and Larsa, disappointed, drew back. "Forgive me, I presumed overmuch. I could think of no other way to avoid bloodshed.

"If you cannot trust me then please, take me as your hostage."

Later, Daina woke to find Ashe gone, and she moved through the sleeping village on ose's feet. Vaan, idly kicking stones, walked up the banks of the Sogoht, and Daina saw her Lady standing on the whimsically painted wooden bridge that spanned the river. She joined the princess.

Ashe moved to the edge, watching the starlight turn the water to broken glass. She put her elbows on the railing, laced her fingers, and hid her mouth behind her hands. "If ever I were in need of your counsel, now is the time. Vaan spoke to me of his brother, and what he is searching for. I do not share his trust that he will find it with me."

"It is not a mistake that you are outcast among your people," Daina said, more clear-sighted in Ashe's case than her own. She also leaned against the railing. "Although you cannot help them as you are now, you can see their hardship firsthand. As queen, you will be able to ease their troubles, and make informed decisions for your people. What other queen has been able to claim that? Never lose your focus, My Lady. We all rely on you, and you alone."

"Rasler," Ashe whispered, closing her eyes against his memory. "Daina. What should I do?"

"Go to Mt. Bur-Omisace with Lord Larsa. There, your questions may be answered."

Ashe sighed. "Very well. However, my heart is not set."

"Keep it open," Daina advised. "Perhaps the correct answer will have better chance to show itself to you if you aren't blinded by doubt."

The next morning, Larsa beamed when Ashe told him of her decision. "I had other reason to invite you. There is someone I'd like you to meet waiting on Bur-Omisace."

"Who is that?"

"An enemy, and an ally also." Larsa shrugged and walked away, precocious as ever. "You will just have to wait and see for yourself."

Daina realized that Basch was not with them. She excused herself and headed back into Jahara in quest of him, and found him speaking with Balthier. Fran put her hand on her hip.

"War-chief Supinelu has arranged for chocobos for Their Majesties," Daina said. "We're ready to go."

"Holy Mt. Bur-Omisace stands at the northern edge of the Jagd Ramooda," Basch said.

"Once we're in jagd, we need not fear pursuit by their airships," Daina said, but Balthier shook his head at her.

"Don't get your hopes up. You remember the _Leviathan_ sailed straight over the Jagd Yensa, right up to Raithwall's tomb. Skystone that works even in jagd. You know nethicite's behind it. Little wonder they're so keen on the stuff."

Basch gravely asked, "And what is it you're after, Balthier? You're a welcome hand, and a great aid, but why?"

"Worried I'm out to steal the nethicite, eh?" Balthier sighed, aggrieved. "Can't say I'm unaccustomed to people doubting my intentions. Nothing could be further from my mind. Shall I swear by your sword or some such?"

"Apologies," Basch said after a moment, "but I needed to know where you stand. Her Majesty depends on you. And you seemed to have an interest in the stone."

"I'm only here to see how the story unfolds," Balthier quipped.


	35. Ward of Steel

Lady Ashe was an accomplished avienne, for she had been riding chocobos since her childhood. Daina swung up on her own yellow bird and adjusted her swords on the saddle. Little Larsa perched behind Basch, as Penelo was doing behind Vaan. Gurdy, the pink cheeked moogle zooming around their heads on bat's wings, chirruped at her flock as Balthier and Fran chose mounts.

"We can reach Paramina Rift through Golmore Jungle," Basch said.

"Head east, kupo," Gurdy said, and pointed with a tiny paw. The frilled sleeves of her pink dress fell well past it. "Follow the chocobo trails east and north, kupo, to find the entrance to Golmore."

"Hyah!" Ashe cried, and their chocobos surged forward on powerful, orange-scaled legs, their narrow heads thrust forward like racing stock.

Nothing ran faster than a chocobo. Two future leaders of Ivalice rode with them; their safety was of utmost concern. They sprinted past ancient battle beasts gone feral, such as mesmenir warhorses and giant flightless wu, as well as the hume-wolf zaghnals and hungry vipers lying in wait in the tall grass, without incident.

Vaan found the hidden chocobo trails and led the way past wild chocobos feathered in black, white, red, and brown, who fluttered their wings and made their odd _wark_ing noises, but otherwise let them pass.

At the entrance to Golmore, a sunny clearing that narrowed into a vine-covered tunnel of trees, they dismounted to prepare their steeds for the trek through the jungle. A chocobo's speed would do no good on the narrow pathways, and the birds balked at the enclosed space.

Penelo slid off Vaan's chocobo, landing neatly. "Wow, I'm impressed, Vaan!"

"I got a good feeling!" he said, hopping down less gracefully than she had, and she pushed him over.

When Basch assisted Larsa down, the boy prince wandered over to the two good-naturedly fussing teens.

Patting her chocobo's neck soothingly, Ashe slipped a leather blindfold over its eyes.

"An alliance between Dalmasca and the Empire?" Basch asked her, leading his chocobo over, and she helped him put the blindfold in place.

"Reason tells me 'tis the only course," she said, with a faint smile at Daina. "We must avoid war with the Empire at all cost. Yet I fear I could not bear the shame. Had I but the strength –"

"A shame perhaps for me and for you," Basch said gently, "but for Dalmasca it is hope!"

"And you can just accept this, can you?" Ashe asked wryly.

Basch stroked the downy feathers under the chocobo's beak, and the bird nibbled affectionately at his wheat gold hair. "After Vayne's ruse I had abandoned hope for honor, yet never did I forget my knightly vows. If I could protect but one person from war's horror, then I would bear any shame. I would bear it proudly. I could not defend my home. What is shame to me?"

Daina settled the blindfold over her own chocobo's eyes, keeping her back to them. Her heart was pounding painfully. She'd tried so hard to shut off her feelings for him, to keep a respectable distance, but when he said things like that she felt with all of her being how much she did love him. He was everything she had been taught to esteem. It wasn't _fair_.

"My people hate the Empire," Ashe murmured. "They will not accept this."

"There is hope," Basch disagreed. "Hope for a future where we can join hands as brothers."

Both Daina and Ashe followed his gaze to Vaan, Penelo, and Larsa, laughing at and teasing each other, the young prince smiling precociously up at the two older Dalmascans.

"Let's go," Balthier called, impatient as always at having to stand still.

Golmore did not take kindly to travelers. The blindfolded chocobos walked with their swaying, uneven gaits, trusting wholly to their riders to steer them over the disintegrating, fern-covered stone paths. The musty smell of the trees caused ruffled feathers, and once, they rode down an incline into a pack of fiery hellhounds and had to retrace their steps at an awkward trot, driving off the hounds with arrows and shot, but nothing worse. A few viera woodwarders met them with unyielding hostility, however, refusing them passage to some of the deeper areas of the jungle.

But not all monsters preferred the deep.

The creature must have been asleep for a thousand years or more, for it was indistinguishable from the mossy boulders surrounding it. When it tasted magick on the air – whether the Dawn Shard or Penelo's scrolls, Daina couldn't tell – it stirred, separating itself from the ground with the cracking of uprooted vegetation. Two treants, the golem tree guardians of the jungle, tumbled off the elder wyrm's boulder-like back, and then rushed forward to attack.

Vaan nearly pulled his chocobo off its feet when he yanked on the reins, and Penelo screamed.

Fran nimbly leapt to the ground, casting an aero spell. The magickal wind tore through the first treant's body. However, the elder wyrm was now fully awake, and its wings and barbed tail slammed into the surrounding trees, causing a choking sporefall that incapacitated Fran and her sensitive viera nose. Balthier wrenched his chocobo around and sent it barreling into the second treant to protect her.

"Majesties, stay back," Basch said, handing Larsa over to Ashe.

The mossy wyrm stomped around, its claws digging deep furrows into the earth. Although Daina's chocobo was not warbred, she gathered the reins in one hand, drew the kogarasumaru with the other, and charged the monster. It was a brutal, bloody battle, one that quickly wore Penelo out as she struggled to keep everyone awake with esuna spells. Basch, Daina, and Vaan fought the enraged creature, coughing on and blinded by the spores in the air. It wasn't until a well-aimed shot from Balthier's sirius punctured one of the wyrm's eyes that Daina was able to sneak in and stab the kogarasumaru through the wyrm's jugular. A torrent of ichor flooded out, hot and sticky, and her chocobo panicked, throwing her.

The wyrm furiously tore the chocobo apart before it died, its gargantuan heart finishing what Daina's blade had started, pumping the last of the wyrm's blood into the earth. It fell, and its body collapsed, becoming nothing more than a hump of moss and pink flowers, to defend the jungle no more.


	36. Cloister of the Highborn

Daina's collarbone was broken. She tried to get up and fell back into the mulch of the wyrm's lair as a line of fire painted agony across her right side, and then she cursed. Fluently and loudly.

That brought someone running to her.

"Here, drink this." Larsa, holding a bottle to her lips.

The hi-potion tasted of liquor, and she pushed it away disgustedly, feeling slightly drunk as she stood, her clavicle and much of her arm going numb. "Thank you, Your Majesty."

"I am impressed with your skill, Lady Praeities," he responded, capping the half-emptied restorative.

Bits of bracken were tangled in her hair and adhering to her coat, but that wasn't nearly as bad as the wyrm's ichor, the color of walnut dye, that stained the green fabric. She sighed. "When I was a child, I used to pretend I was a wyrmslayer. The reality is nothing like the fantasy. It was far from a clean kill, My Lord, though I thank you for your courtesy. My chocobo is dead, and I seem to have lost my sword."

"It is here." And there was Basch, striding toward them, Daina's kogarasumaru in his hand. He held it out to her, hilt first, the green tassel swinging. His odd not-quite-a-smile played around his mouth. "Not all good kills are clean."

Daina considered him, and his words. In a way, he was asserting himself as her superior, a captain proud of one of his soldiers, rather than as a man interested in a woman. She decided that was acceptable. For two years, she'd successfully served her Lady under Vossler in the same capacity. If she was smitten, it wasn't his problem; it was hers, and she would deal with it accordingly. She closed her fingers around the kogarasumaru's handle, and his lifted away without making contact, but his smile grew. She straightened her shoulders. Good enough.

"But what are we going to do?" Vaan asked, scrubbing the back of his head. "We're down one chocobo."

Before the thought that tried to push itself to the forefront of her mind could formulate, Daina turned to Ashe. "My Lady, if I may?"

"Of course," Ashe said. The two women settled on Ashe's chocobo, Daina behind her princess, and Basch and Larsa once again mounted theirs. It was the best solution. They could not risk both Majesties on a single bird, and their weight was now spread as evenly as possible across their mounts. It was slower going, for three of their chocobos were burdened with two riders apiece, but they traveled through the steadily cooling air and uphill paths of Golmore safely.

At the exit of the jungle, where frostbitten ferns and frozen moss opened out to a rocky ravine several inches deep in snow drifts, they pulled the blindfolds off their chocobos like falconers releasing their birds to a hunt. The chocobos _wark_ed at their sudden freedom. Powerful legs pumping, they galloped up the winding, snowy slopes of Paramina Rift.

Daina pressed herself against her Lady, wrapping her arms around Ashe's waist and laying her cheek along her shoulder, attempting to conserve warmth between their bodies, but the wind whistling past her ears was achingly cold.

Balthier, in the lead, slowed, and then guided his chocobo to the side of the trail. The others copied him, and Daina saw a group of people making their way up the mountain. Refugees, headed for the sanctum of Mt. Bur-Omisace, to seek alms from the kiltias. Since its founding two thousand years ago, the Light of Kiltia had willingly abandoned the power to influence the government, and the kiltias were forbidden to enter politics. Sanctuary was there for all who sought it, for holy Mt. Bur-Omisace remained a neutral territory within the war-torn Ivalice.

"Empire parades down city streets, while refugees walk barefoot through the snow," Balthier commented sourly when they were past.

Larsa clenched his fists on his thighs. "And so I sue for peace to stop short war and ease their suffering. My father will choose peace."

"Will he now? You sound sure of yourself. You can never know another, even your father." With this bitter philippic, Balthier rode away.

Dejection settled over Larsa, his eyes unseeing.

"Don't take it the wrong way, okay?" Vaan said softly, but Larsa did not reply.

They rode to the peak of the mountain itself, consigning their chocobos to the stables in the Sand-Strewn Pass, and made their way on foot through the refugee camp to the great temple in the center of the compound. Inside the temple it was warmer, and Daina felt some of the ache ease out of her recently-broken collarbone, but their footsteps echoed into empty space. There was no other sound within the temple.

The current Gran Kiltias was a helgas, his body hidden behind the robes of his faith, his pointed ears parting his age-whitened hair, a fur-like beard obscuring his time-ravaged face, his eyes closed, his chin resting on his chest. Larsa and Ashe approached him.

For several minutes, nobody said anything.

In a stage whisper, Vaan asked, "Is he sleeping?"

Several furious "_shh_!" flew at him and he flinched, but then Anastasis spoke.

Not with his vocal chords. Daina didn't hear him with her ears, but in her thoughts, his deep voice foreign and somehow comforting.

"No, my child. I do not sleep. I dream." His lips weren't moving, the gray skin of his face slack. "For reality and illusion are a duality, two parts of a whole. Only the mirror of dreams reflects what is true."

Ashe stepped forward respectfully. "Anastasis, Your Grace, I am Ashelia –"

"Lay down your words," the ancient voice commanded, and her mouth snapped shut. "Ashelia, daughter of Raminas, I have dreamt your dream. Who better to carry on the Dalmascan line than she who bears the Dawn Shard? Your dream of a kingdom restored is known to me."

"Gran Kiltias, then give us your blessing." Larsa gestured at Ashe. "Grant the Lady Ashe her accession –"

From behind them, this time, the interruption came. A self-assured male voice, rolling its _r_'s in the Rozarrian way, said, "I do not suppose this is something you might reconsider?"


	37. Broken Sands

"My little emperor-in-waiting," the Rozarrian-accented voice drawled, amused and affectionate. "You called and I have come."

Larsa extended a hand to the dark-haired nobleman that strode through them as if they were curtains, expecting them to bow out of his way. They did, of course; Daina unconsciously moved closer to Basch. A dark-haired girl, her expression set in rehearsed blankness, stuck to the noble's elbow. He wore a striped blue shirt, loose across his olive-toned chest, and white trousers that someone had to have _painted_ on. A pair of sunglasses hid the upper half of his face.

Dismissing Larsa's outstretched hand, he patted Larsa on the head with a grin.

Larsa pushed him away, smoothing his hair, and resignedly said, "This is the man I wanted you to meet. Believe it or not, he is a member of the noble House Margrace, rulers of the Rozarrian Empire."

"I am but one of very, very many," the man demurred, putting his hand over his heart as if wounded. "Try as I might, I could not stop this war alone. Thus I came seeking Larsa's assistance." He removed his sunglasses. Like oiled machinery, the girl plucked the sunglasses out of his hand and tucked them into the front of her blouse. Not missing a beat, he introduced himself with Rozarrian flair: "Al-Cid Margrace, at your service. To think I stand before the Lady Ashe. It is truly an honor."

Larsa sighed, as if he wished his cohort would behave.

Al-Cid knelt, and kissed Ashe's hand, his face suggesting he could conceive no greater pleasure. "I see it is true after all. Ah, stunning is Dalmasca's desert bloom."

Penelo put her hands over her mouth, her young fancy touched, but Daina frowned. Such overblown niceties offended her. However, since Ashe did not object – nor did she invite further displays – Daina squashed the impulse to intercede.

Anastasis dream-spoke. "In Archades, Larsa. In Rozarria, Al-Cid. They dream not of war. Should empire join with empire, the way will open for a new Ivalice in our time."

"Gran Kiltias," Al-Cid said with a shout of laughter, his western passion unabashed in the presence of so much hushed dignity. "You speak much of dreams. But in the real world, war is upon us."

"Gran Kiltias," Ashe interjected. "I was told my coming here would prevent this war. I was to assume my father's throne and announce the restoration of Dalmasca, treat with the Empire for peace, and persuade the Resistance to stay their hand. I have not come all this way to be asked to reconsider!"

Al-Cid waved his hand. "A word from you and the Resistance would stop cold, and Rozarria's pretext for joining the war, scattered, off to the four winds. This was what we had hoped. Alas, circumstances change. A full two years have passed since your reported death. Were it to become known you were still alive, I fear it could only worsen our current situation."

"Because I am powerless to help." Ashe's hands, which she had clasped in her plea to the Gran Kiltias, dropped.

"Nay," Al-Cid said, shaking his dark head. "In fact, it has little to do with you."

"Then what?" Larsa put in. "If Lady Ashe were to extend her hand in friendship, perhaps I could then persuade the emperor. His Excellency will solve things peacefully –"

For the second time, Al-Cid interrupted the young prince. "The Emperor Gramis is no more," he said flatly. "His life was taken."

Larsa's face drained of color, his blue eyes wide with horror. "Father!"

"No," Daina breathed. Another war orphan. Larsa seemed to shrink, his soul somewhere far away from them, unreachable.

After a compassionate pause, Al-Cid turned again to Ashe.

"Let us suppose you approach the Empire with a peaceful resolution. The late Emperor Gramis would have lent you his ear, that much is certain. But we are dealing with Vayne Solidor. Should the princess return, he would claim her an imposter. All to tempt the Resistance into battle. Vayne wants this war. As our ill luck would have it, the man is a military genius."

"The dreams have told me thus," Anastasis agreed. "To reveal yourself would imperil us all. I see war, and Vayne's name writ bold on history's face."

"Archadian banners fly high. They are making ready for the coming war." Like an extension of his arm, the servant girl whipped a piece of paper out of her pocket and handed it to Al-Cid, who then opened it with an unnecessary flick of the wrist. "The Western Armada prepares for war, under Vayne's command no less. The newly formed 12th Fleet has already been deployed. The Imperial 1st Fleet stands ready. They'll be underway as soon as the _Odin_'s refit is complete. And there is more: The 2nd Kerwon Expeditionary Force is being called in to replace the missing 8th, so there will be no gaps. The largest force ever seen!"

The same flair: Paper folded, passed to the girl, and it disappeared into her pocket.

"And then . . ." Ashe lowered her head, thinking. "The nethicite is the coup de grace."

Al-Cid nodded, and Ashe turned with renewed vigor to Anastasis. "Gran Kiltias, Your Grace. I spoke to you of my succession. Let us put that aside. Should I become queen of Dalmasca now, powerless as I am, I can protect nothing. With a greater power at my disposal, perhaps then."

"It is the nethicite of which you dream?"

"I require something far greater."

Startling them all, Anastasis's eyes popped open, and he spoke to them, his fangs flashing behind his withered lips. "To wield power against power. Truly the words of a hume-child."

"I am descended from the Dynast-King himself," Ashe said defensively.

"Indeed. Then you have but one choice. Seek you the other power Raithwall left."

"Does such a thing exist?" Ashe breathed.

"Journey across the Paramina Rift to the Stilshrine of Miriam. There rests the gift he entrusted to the Gran Kiltias of his time. Seek it out. The Sword of Kings can cut through nethicite." Anastasis took a breath, eyes drifting shut. "Why he would entrust the power to destroy nethicite, the instrument of his greatness, to another and not to his own progeny, I cannot say. Awaken Ashelia B'nargin and take up your sword, or your dream will remain but a dream."

Ashe turned away, momentarily pausing to look at Larsa, who had not moved and did not acknowledge her, and she left the temple.


	38. Tracks of the Beast

Once they provisioned themselves to travel through the blizzards currently raging across Paramina Rift, they retrieved the Sword of Kings from the stilshrine at the foot of Karydine Glacier with very little trouble. Only an esper caused a slight delay, accosting them with deadly blizzaja magick, but Vaan gained its crystal and its name: Mateus, The Corrupt. The sword was an ungainly, over-decorated thing, a greatsword almost too heavy for Ashe to lift, but lift it she did.

"This is the sword," she confirmed, looking through its lozenge-shaped prongs. "The nethicite destroyer."

Basch hefted it easier than the slender Ashe had, wrapped it in canvas, and slung it over his own shoulder.

"With this proof of Her Highness's lineage, and the power to combat the shards Vayne holds, we must return to Mt. Bur-Omisace as quickly as possible," Daina said, and Basch nodded.

She turned to go, leading the way out of the stilshrine, trusting that he would remain by Her Majesty. Daina had discovered in the trek over the glacier that it was better that way. If she didn't hover over Ashe, she wouldn't have to repel all Basch's awkward chivalry. Since Basch was her Lady's shield, then Daina was her sword. Her kogarasumaru and the ashura swung true through the magickal and bestial guardians of the stilshrine, and she easily cleared the way for Ashe.

She didn't walk alone. Sometimes Penelo, and sometimes Vaan joined her, and while with them, she laughed, discussed their tastes in music and clothing, and shared stories like any teenager. Other times, she strode beside the beautiful Fran, the top of her head not reaching the viera's shoulder, and Balthier was never far.

Daina watched the sky pirates carefully, not quite understanding their relationship. They behaved like an old married couple, each aware of every move the other made, but not particularly enamored by it. Nor did they ever touch. They were comfortable, their flirtation so subdued it was almost gone. _Partners_, Balthier had called himself and the viera. He also seemed as much aware of Ashe as Fran, his eyes often turned toward her with a sort of wistful confusion, and Fran saw this, and she smiled.

That was what it meant to be an adult, Daina supposed, and she strived to emulate the archer woman.

Astride their chocobos, bundled against the piercing wind that blew the existing clouds away and brought new, their party made it across the glacier and halfway through the rift before an ominous thrumming from overhead necessitated a halt.

An Archadian fleet sailed by, once more operating flawlessly through jagd, toward Mt. Bur-Omisace. The ships moved inexorably, neither pausing nor taking any notice of them, though Daina and the others were strung along the paths of snow like fallen gil, bright yellow in the sun.

An hour passed, and when they reached the foot of the holy mountain, Fran suddenly pointed. "There!"

Smoke, a thin tendril of black against the impossibly blue sky, rising from the mountain's peak. The Archadian fleet was gone.

Ashe's chocobo charged ahead, and she shouted, "We must hurry!"

The scenes that met them were a horrible portent of the war to come.

The sun clouded over, and it began to rain, freezing needles of water that soaked hair and clothing. Everywhere they looked, they saw signs of a one sided battle: Tents and food stands torn down and set on fire, bloodied and scared refugees huddled around their few possessions, shell-shocked kiltias lost in prayers. Hunched nu mou acolytes made their way to the wounded, their tails and the robes of their office trailing along the wet ground and slowly turning black with grime, their canine faces mournful. The airy architecture of the temple compound was scarred, broken, and burned.

Ashe brazenly rode her chocobo all the way up to the temple's approach, flinging herself to the ground with little care for the bird, and raced through the open doors. Daina was fast on her heels. They pelted up to the throne of the Gran-Kiltias, but it was empty.

A judge magister stood in front of it, a curved, spiked sword in his hand.

"Ah, our vagrant princess," he rumbled, an imposing wall of adamantine and steel. "Swift has your lust for revenge led you to the Sword of Kings."

He stepped aside, just far enough for them to see Anastasis prone on the floor. He was not moving.

"You will surrender it to me." The judge held out his hand imperiously, walking toward them. He began to glow, silky eldritch blue light that caressed the designs in his armor. "Too late, and to their sorrow do those who misplace their trust in gods learn their fate."

"Fran, I don't like the look of that," Balthier said.

Her ears swiveled. "This Mist – he holds a stone! It controls him!"

"No." The judge burst out laughing, stretching. "No, the power of manufacted nethicite is the power of Man! A weapon forged by his wisdom, who would challenge the gods themselves! A fitting blade for a true Dynast-King. Raithwall did but pretend the title, a cur begging nethicite scraps from his master's table. Hark!" He was panting now, the sound exaggerated by his helm, his words going thick and viscous with each heavy breath and a leer none of them could see. He drew a second sword, crafted like a spiked meat chopper. "Ivalice hails her true Dynast-King, Vayne Solidor! He shall defy the will of the gods, and see the reins of history back in the hands of Man! His time is nigh! The new Ivalice holds no place for the name Dalmasca."

His steps quickened. He gathered speed like an ancient steam-powered engine, bringing the wicked swords to bear. He was crazy. Absolutely mad. Daina thrust Ashe behind her and drew the kogarasumaru fearlessly, ready to meet and defeat him. Basch stood tall at her side.

"The stain of Raithwall's blood shall be washed clean from history's weave!" the judge screamed, and brought the swords down.

Daina met them, and nearly buckled under his power – such strength was unnatural! – but she understood the danger they were in. Anastasis, if not dead, could not wait much longer for aid. It wasn't just her life, it was his, it was Ashe's, it was Dalmasca's – it was Ivalice. She slid out from under the swords, blade scraping against blade with a terrible squeal, and went on the offensive.


	39. Diverging Way

_"Like this, Daina. Think of it as an extension of your arm. Do not fight it. Let the blade be your teacher."_

Her father's words, spoken twelve years ago. The way of the sword was her way of living. It wasn't about brute powerhouse strength, as the judge employed, battering at the lady knight in his insane drive to reach Ashe. It was about skill. Strategy. Lessons learned by rote, seared into her muscles' memory, and experience gained along the road. She focused on keeping a cool head while riding the high of battle, utilizing the inevitable fear to divine the ebb and flow of the fight. She knew when to press an advantage or to give ground.

The temple's approach was narrow and long, a strip of plush carpeting flanked by fat pillars and still pools. The judge, consumed by his Mist madness, ruthlessly plowed into Daina and Basch in order to reach his intended target, but he could not get by their swords. He was not alone, of course; the sounds of strife permeated Daina's awareness – her friends were also fighting, somewhere behind her.

During battle, there was room for speech, if the combatants could salvage enough breath for it. Ashe called upon the esper Belias, and the gigas, lightly for a creature of such enormity, hopped into the fray, shunting the judge toward the emptied throne with its four arms and giant axe, away from its summoner.

"Are you all right?" Basch asked Daina, sending shivers coursing through her. She merely nodded, and they took up the fight once more when the gigas yielded, its power drained. By then, however, the judge was nearing the last of his own reserves.

When he died, his armor burst open like a kernel of corn popping, and visible, white hot Mist streamed out in a torrent. His corpse fell, limbs askew, his entire torso mangled beyond recognition. The silence made Daina's ears ring. She cleaned off the kogarasumaru and sheathed it.

The judge had forgotten the way of the sword, and he had paid the price for it.

Balthier knelt by the corpse, examining it. He turned away with a revolted snort. "He set his very bones about with manufacted nethicite. The Gran Kiltias?"

Penelo's hands hovered over the aged helgas, not quite daring to touch him. A golden tuft of phoenix down perched on his white hair, but when it fluttered to the carpet with no hint of a spark, she shook her head. It was too late. Then, her eyes widened and she looked around. "Wait – what about Larsa?"

"Gone," called the cultured voice of Al-Cid Margrace. "Spirited away by Judge Gabranth."

Supported by his servant, Al-Cid shuffled into the temple, and when he reached Ashe, he took his arm off the servant girl's shoulders and lowered himself painfully to the floor.

"You okay?" Vaan asked.

Al-Cid made no reply to that. Tiredly, he said, "As for our young lordling, he went along – to avoid trouble, you see. But Judge Bergan had other ideas." He gestured at the fallen judge, and then sighed, a hand pressed to his ribs. "He flew into a rage, and I was left to fend for myself. Please, Princess. You must permit me to take you back with me to Rozarria."

"So that you can protect me?" Ashe's countenance betrayed her distaste at such an idea.

Al-Cid's eyebrows rose, and he answered her in the same semi-sarcastic tone. "I would lay down my life at a single word to be sure, but I harbor no maundering delusions of valiant grandeur. Vayne has our War Pavilion jumping at shadows. They favor a preemptive strike. But you – you will convince them otherwise. You will see that they do not start this war."

"This I cannot do," Ashe murmured. "Forgive me. But my errand here is not yet done. I must wield the Sword of Kings, and with it bring an end to the Dusk Shard."

"Ah, this stone," Al-Cid purred. "Do you even know where it is?"

"I can venture a guess," Balthier interjected. "The Draklor Laboratory. In Archades. The Empire's weapons research begins and ends there." Smirking, he sauntered up to Ashe. "How soon do we leave?"

"At once," she said, giving him a look of gratitude. She bowed her head at Al-Cid. "As for matters in Rozarria, I bid you luck."

"So you would leave each to fend for his own. Let us hope that you are not disappointed." He held up his arm, and the servant girl took it across her shoulders to help him to his feet. He began to leave, but then tossed one last bit of news over his shoulder. "Ah, that's right. Larsa left a message. 'The differences between our two lands will fade before the shared dream of men.' "

He slipped his sunglasses on and flicked them a casual salute. "My leave I take."

Outside the temple, the atmosphere of desolation was made worse by the driving rain. Ashe watched it for a while from the shelter of the chocobo stables. Then, she turned from it, to survey her ragtag entourage.

"How do you propose we reach Archades?" she asked the stable in general. "Archadia's borders will be well guarded for fear of Rozarrian invasion. We dare not approach by air."

Balthier answered her, leaning against a stall. "And their navy will see that the coast is watched as well. No, we'll go by foot. We'll cross into Archadia by the Salikawood."

At that, Daina looked up. The Salikawood. The old tree roads used to be the main thoroughfare through Nabradia, until sky travel made the land highways obsolete. "The easiest way to the 'wood is to head north from Nalbina," she said.

Nalbina. A shudder seemed to run through each of them, as if they completed a closed circuit. So many memories associated with Nalbina. So many negative connotations.

"Getting that far should be half the fun," Balthier said.

His incorrigible sarcasm and roguish smirk helped, a little. They dispersed, some to gather provisions, others to procure lodgings for the night. Daina dismissed Basch when she and Ashe claimed their room, and she drew a bath for her Lady.

Tomorrow, they would start on a new journey that would take her home.


	40. Journey's Rest

From the outside, Nalbina Town looked much more promising than the dingy coffin of a dungeon below the fortress's exposed bones.

The Jajim Bazaar raged along the West Barbican. Nalbina was a key strategic point, now for the Empire as it had been for Dalmasca, for it presented a logical stopover for anyone traveling between Old Nabradia and Dalmasca. Hawkers, shoppers, travelers, Imperials, masons, and other laborers clogged the fortress plaza. It was hot and noisy, the air full of shouts, stone dust, perfume, and the scent of food.

"We'll get separated in a crowd like that," Daina said, dubiously eyeing the bazaar, packed so thick with bodies it amazed her that anyone could get anywhere. She gently backed her chocobo into the pen with the others.

"Oh, come on. Where's your sense of adventure?" Vaan asked, grinning hugely. He grabbed her hand.

"It isn't so bad once you're in it," Penelo added, grabbing her other hand. "Bazaars are fun. We grew up in one of the largest around. Let's go see what's for sale!"

With shining eyes, the two Dalmascans laughingly dragged Daina into the crowds.

"Wait! My Lady!" Daina was no match for the two of them combined, and the last glimpse she caught of Ashe was her Lady smiling, and mouthing, _Go_. The princess seemed to be content to stay behind with the chocobos and her thoughts.

Daina couldn't resist her friends after that. The giddy atmosphere of the bazaar was contagious, infecting her with Vaan's "sense of adventure." She and Vaan sorted through the wares at the armory, and he spent 4500g for a new sword, what the seeq merchant called a lohengrin. It was a beautiful blade, with a more elegant point than his old broadsword, and embedded with sapphire-blue and tangerine lacquer. He was able to trade the broadsword and his shield, as well as a few other pieces of loot, for a diamond shield, but when he followed the girls through the bazaar, he began to moan about his lack of gil. Penelo laughed at him, telling him that his pockets were full of holes. However, she did buy him a steamed bun when she and Daina stopped for something to eat.

"Look, how pretty!" Penelo exclaimed. She danced over to a kiosk swarming with such baubles and jewelry typical of Dalmasca, exclaiming over every fresh piece that caught her eye. She held up a silicon tortoiseshell choker dripping with rubies. "Look, Vaan – how is it?"

"That's nice," he said gamely, lacing his fingers across the back of his head, and Penelo giggled, pirouetting.

Daina, whose eye gravitated more toward a well forged blade than necklaces, tilted her head back. The ruined fortress stood tall above them, its Aerodrome still in operation, an Imperial guard stationed at the elevator.

Here, possibly where she was standing, Rasler had been struck down by an enemy arrow, and Basch had ridden with the dying prince through the heat of battle in a desperate, failed attempt to save his life. Here, also, King Raminas drew his last breaths. And here, deep in the fortress's underbelly, Basch had been sentenced to a false death, suspended in pain, blind and deafened by the darkness and seclusion, innocent while Ivalice condemned him a traitor.

"There you are," Basch said, his low voice almost lost in the cacophony of the bazaar. "Her Majesty wishes to go, if you are ready."

Daina might have reacted with surprise, or embarrassment, or confusion. Instead, she looked up at him, her eyes tracing the scar across his brow, compassion bringing the telltale signs of tears. "How did you do it?" she asked.

For just a moment, he looked taken aback, but then he, too, studied the fortress. The silver chain and phoenix pendant glinted.

"It is not something I would wish to relate," he said at last. "But I know you do not mean ill. One loses touch with reality, after a while. Left there to rot, but not allowed to die, I forgot."

"Forgot?"

Amber eyes, not concealing the core of flame and steel inside him. "I forgot the touch of sunlight, the caress of moonlight, the sensation of wind, rain, and sand. I forgot the sound of voices, so much that I did not recognize my own when I cried out. The taste of food became a dream, and then faded altogether – I ate because I must, and I loathed myself for it. Time had no meaning. My own body became the whole universe, with nothing existing beyond the torment. But there was one thing I did not forget: My duty as a knight. That, and only that, saved me."

Daina was shaking. The years yawned between them again. She couldn't imagine it. She couldn't bear it. "I'm sorry. I should never have asked such a thing. I only wanted to understand."

"I am no longer alone. I have all of you to thank for that," he answered simply.

He walked away, to catch the attention of Vaan and Penelo, and Daina dazedly followed. It was some minutes before Penelo could be coerced away from the stand, however, and Daina slowly became aware of the jewelry in front of her eyes. One piece in particular seemed to jump out at her.

A barrette, carved from shell or fish scale of a lustrous white, in the shape of a dove in flight, brushed over with gold.

She stared at it. Those very birds used to roost in the dovecote at her parent's house. Her mother kept feeders, and Daina remembered waking in the gray of dawn to the comforting sound of them cooing under the eaves.

"Let's go," Vaan called, and Daina started.

She cast a last look at the barrette and obediently turned to follow, but Basch, frowning slightly, reached out and lifted the dove from its peg.

"A pretty thing," he commented, and then he signaled to the merchant, handing over the gil to pay for it. Then, solemnly, he placed the barrette in Daina's hand. "Perhaps the most unbearable thing to have forgotten was beauty. A man withers fastest in a place of ugliness and despair."

With that, he led the way out of the bazaar.


	41. Echoes From Time's Garden

Mostly through Balthier's means, they hired on with one of the caravans leaving Nalbina Town for the Hunter's Camp on Phon Coast. The caravan's route led it through the rugged, mountainous Mosphoran Highwaste, and then the disused roads of the Salikawood beyond. The Highwaste teemed with slaven wilders, worgens, vultures, pythons, and humbabas, none of which permitted the passing of caravans through their various lairs and nests. And, it was hinted, a malevolent bomb had taken up residence in the Salikawood.

"We'll be in charge of protection," Balthier said. "I hope you don't object to such work."

"That will be fine," Ashe said. She seemed distracted, however, and he let the subject drop.

The Highwaste rose out of the desert, rocky and peppered with steaming springs, which sustained the floatweed and other flora that would never survive in the sandy expanse of Dalmasca.

_Home_, Daina thought, where green things grew. Where water did not hide from the sun. She clipped her new barrette into her hair, swung herself into the saddle, and prepared to see what had become of Nabradia.

* * *

"Vaan!"

Daina frowned. What was Penelo yelling about now?

After several days of traveling through the Highwaste, they had reached the Salikawood, and every person in the caravan was used to the vociferousness of Vaan and Penelo.

Ashe's face suffered no more than a brief flicker of irritation before she resumed her enquiry. "How long until the repairs to the gate are complete?"

"Can't rightly say," the bangaa merchant said, scratching the back of his head. "I heard tell some of the workers have been slacking off here in the 'wood. That's a moogle for you. Best mechanics and craftsmen there are, but a lazier bunch never seen this side of the forever after. Fact remains, we can't get through to Phon Coast until the gate's fixed."

"Vaan! _Vaan_!"

Penelo again. And she sounded scared. Daina and Ashe looked at each other, thanked the merchant, and started toward the cries. The Salikawood's highways consisted of wooden bridges, and, sometimes, the branches of the trees themselves, wide enough to accommodate four chocobos walking abreast, and worn flat by the passage of many feet. It was a dense forest, with less of the creeping vines and gloominess of Golmore Jungle, and more wildflowers. The ground, wreathed in shallow lakes so far below, was lost in misty green.

"Vaan, get back!"

That was Basch. The two women quickened their strides, but then an explosion somewhere ahead of them rocked the weather-beaten planks under their feet. Ashe fetched up against a wagon. Daina took off running, pushing frightened rubberneckers out of her way.

"It's the bomb!" someone shrieked.

"The bomb!"

"We're all going to die!"

A second explosion sent Daina sprawling. Leaves, twigs, and sparks rained down on her, a few broken, flaming planks crashing to the platform as well. The merchants and passengers scattered, screaming.

"Are you all right?" Ashe asked.

"Just got the breath knocked out of me," Daina grunted. She jumped to her feet and followed Ashe into the billowing smoke.

She wasn't quick enough to bring the kogarasumaru to bear when the first bomb bounded at her, pulsating like a hectic heart, but Ashe intercepted it with her flame shield.

"What are bombs doing here?" she cried.

Bombs were relics of past wars, gunpowder contained in a metal shell carved all over with glyphs and sigils, and then given life with powerful fire magick. Four of these bombs danced around, kept aloft by their intense heat, their stubby arms flailing, their wicked mouths open wide like rents in the earth to spew lava and flame, their maddened, swirling eyes seeming to fix on everything at once. As they watched, one gave a cry for help, and a fifth bomb materialized.

"They're rogue," Daina guessed. "Probably set free when their creators died in the battle two years ago. They aren't smart enough to realize that they no longer have a purpose."

Vaan lay on his back, his face and arms soot-blackened, the lohengrin beyond his reach.

"_Vaan_!" Penelo screamed. Arc scale in hand, she ran at him, but three bombs converged on her and she squealed.

"Penelo!" Daina shouted. "Get back!"

The girl threw her arms over her head and retreated. From the far side of the swarm, spears of ice froze two of the bombs; the third, but lightly touched, swelled. Its parody of a face seemed to laugh, and then it exploded, blowing a hole through the walkway.

Fran started another blizzara spell.

Vaan was back on his feet, chasing one of the bombs down, and Ashe went to assist him, their two swords flashing in the bomb-light.

"Penelo!" Daina ran to her. "You have to get back. It's too dangerous here."

"But Vaan!" Tears streamed down her face.

Desperately, Daina cast around for aid, and appealed to the sky pirate. "Balthier, get her out of here!"

"No! I have to help Vaan!"

"Another explosion like that one, and who's going to help you?" Balthier asked, unintentionally smearing ash through his sweaty, honey brown hair. He put his shoulder in Penelo's middle and scooped her up, bearing her away. She kicked and sobbed in vexation.

Daina didn't wait to make sure they got clear before she joined the battle. The bombs zipped around like giant, crazy bumblebees, biting, slapping, and slinging fira magick. If she and the others didn't deal enough damage to one before its fuse ran out, the bomb exploded, sending shockwaves through the Salikawood. Fran's repeated cura spells soaked into Daina like cooling rain.

When they finally whittled the swarm down to one last bomb, all five of them converged on it; for, as Daina saw with weakening relief, Basch was there, although he looked a little worse for wear.

The bomb, however, chose to self destruct. It landed with a thump and rolled into a slight dip in the planks. It lay there comically, its grin upside down, its useless arms undulating. An aureole of flame erupted around it. Everyone took one startled look at it, turned, and sprinted for the far end of the walkway.

The ensuing explosion ripped the 'wood asunder.


	42. Reach of the Damned

"Ouch," Daina said under her breath. Like the others, she gathered herself together, brushing debris off her clothes, picking bloody splinters out of her knees. Her ears were ringing. She felt like a potato that had recently been mashed.

"What did you _do_?" Ashe glared at Vaan.

"You must not blame him, Highness." Backing up a step, Basch sighed when her furious gaze whipped to him. Gently, he explained. "A craftsmoogle came this way first and unwittingly garnered the creature's attention. Vaan was only trying to assist her."

"What do we do now?" Daina asked.

As one, they surveyed the damage to the walkway – it was completely destroyed. A large crowd stood at the edge of the far side, Balthier and Penelo in the front. A tiny moogle with her paws over her mouth shook from turquoise pompon to booted toe next to them.

Fran strode up to the dropoff, and then her lips pursed and she shook her silver head. Ruefully, Balthier crossed his arms.

"Looks like you'll have to find another way around," he called.

Fran gestured with one long-nailed hand. "The gate that we must pass is to the south and east, but we must go north and west first to seek another path."

"I'll be waiting," he said.

"I'm sorry, Penelo," Vaan mumbled.

* * *

The further they traveled to the northwest, the thicker the Mist twined around their ankles and twinkled in their eyes. It was different, somehow, than the Mist that had manifested before. Like a beast lurking just out of sight, it toyed with their senses, often leading one of them to the edge of a walkway that wasn't there, its cloying tendrils hiding all but the most determined of monsters, like the blackened malboro kings, or the white, bark-like antares. The gentler denizens of the Salikawood, the pumpkin heads and wyrdhares, were replaced by larger sprinters and chocobos here, all unfriendly, all drunk on the vaguely threatening Mist.

Daina was having difficulty breathing. Everywhere she looked, she saw the decay of the 'wood, the cancerous growths on the trees, the mutated, obscene flowers. Depression settled in her heart, horror clogged her throat. _This_ was what was become of her home! A forest of sweet stench, vicious hungers hidden behind the veil of normalcy. For _this_, she had to thank House Solidor!

When the first baknamy appeared as if birthed by the Mist and chucked a white fang into their midst, wounding Fran with the sudden burst of thundara magick, Daina lost her temper.

Baknamy! In the Salikawood! The erstwhile Knights of House Nabradia would never have allowed the foul, conniving, thieving little people this close to the royal city!

She removed its horned, snouted head from its compact shoulders, and the child-sized body, made decent by bits of leather and metal armor, its fingers and toes tipped with thick black nails, fell backward, slid off the walkway, and disappeared from sight.

Eight more baknamy materialized out of the swirling Mist and surrounded Daina with guns, short swords, and magick-imbued fangs torn from the skulls of dead cerberuses. They chittered at her. They pointed at her hair, her facial features, and they laughed.

"May the abyss take you, hideous goblins!" she raged. So, they would laugh at the misfortune of Nabudis and her orphaned children. They would invade the once-beautiful city, claim it as their own, and loot its bones.

Then they would die for it.

The kogarasumaru drove in, piercing the closest baknamy through the chest. It gurgled, its round, animal-like eyes managing to convey its agony before death glazed them over.

A split second of stunned silence, and then the seven remaining baknamy howled in anger. Several of them fired their guns, and the shot tore through Daina's left shoulder. She ignored the pain, the warm wetness that poured down her arm, and slew another. A blue fang dissolved in her face, releasing a blast of wintry magick that blinded her.

They might have overpowered her and killed her, so outnumbered and lost in her fury was she, but she was not alone. Ashe, Vaan, Basch, and even Fran joined her, and within minutes only two baknamy remained. The first one squawked, dancing in terror, and then simply vanished. The other one swiveled its ears, wrinkled its nose, and bared its small, sharp teeth. Then, it flung something at Daina before it, too, vanished.

Daina, when she bent over to pick up the moldering object, gasped and went to one knee. Blood, sticky and red, coated her glove and the kogarasumaru's hilt.

Basch muttered something that sounded suspiciously like, "Headstrong, foolish girl." He knelt in front of her and pressed a folded bit of cloth to her shoulder. First a sting, then numbness spread; he must have soaked the cloth with potion. Then, he produced a pocketknife and proceeded to remove the shot still embedded in the joint. It hurt. Daina swooned, tears leaking out of the corners of her eyes.

"Here," Ashe said. "I have one left."

Hi-potion again. Daina grimaced at the taste and would have given it back after the first swallow, but Basch, seeming annoyed, forced her to drink it all. Lightheaded, Daina sat down and waited for the ground to stop spinning. Was this how jellies felt, why they wibbled and wobbled so? She could picture them, the slimy blue monsters, jiggling like a plate of flan. Her stomach cramped and she thought of other things.

"What's that?" she heard Vaan ask.

The Mist was clearing, parting like clouds before the sun. Out of the fogginess loomed a dark, hard edged structure, tilting at a thirty degree angle. All was desolate and dilapidated, blackened and eroded, and the _smell_ . . .

Ashe sucked in a sharp breath, and Basch stepped forward, his eyes locked on the apparition – for apparition it must be, Daina thought.

The royal palace of Nabudis was built in the middle of a crystalline lake, its gardens and courtyards housed within the battlements; she knew it well. For years, she and her father had spent their days in the palace, practicing the way of the sword in one of the lower halls, and in the jousting ring, riding chocobos through the training grounds. The palace was always busy, bustling with life and servants going about their business.

Lord Prince Rasler used to stand on the battlements with her father in his retinue, discussing the coming war, and once, Daina's future.

This lifeless hulk _couldn't_ be Verdpale Palace.


	43. Vale of Lingering Sorrow

The lake was gone. The palace sat, sunken and crooked, in a marsh, utterly still and silent except for the twinkling, nauseating Mist. The marsh and the 'wood fused together here, and Daina had not realized her boots trod on mud, and not the tree-roads.

"This is all that remains of Nabudis," Basch told Vaan, confirming Daina's fears. "Two years ago it was destroyed by a mysterious force. The work of the Midlight Shard."

"This? In just two years?" Vaan gazed open-mouthed at the ruins, which seemed to have been there for a thousand years or more. "How?"

"As the Dawn Shard brought down _Leviathan_, a fell Mist spilled forth. It is like the same thing happened here. The Mist has corrupted the life of this place. It is a necrohol overrun with beasts. We tread here on a fool's errand. We had best turn back."

Daina's faculties had returned to her, the hi-potion no longer coursing through her system like alcohol, her shoulder healed. She picked up the object the baknamy had maliciously thrown at her. It was a leather-bound book, its spine so far decayed that it fell apart in her hands, the pages so moldy and water-damaged that most were illegible. But a few toward the middle were still intact.

She began to read, her voice hushed in the Mist. " 'It was a clement day when my partner and I arrived at Nabudis at the end of a long journey. I remember looking upon her beautiful, welcoming streets and realizing no other place could be more fitting a destination. Gathering up what coin we had, we secured residence, and began to look for work. From odd jobs to risky border patrols, we did all, and were satisfied. Thinking on it now, I realize, I was happy then.' "

It was a journal, scribed in a bold, masculine hand. Frowning, Daina read on: " 'We were not particular in our acceptance of work, and so in a short time amassed enough wealth that we might live in some degree of comfort. Our residence began to fill with the articles and artifacts of our daily lives, and soon we found our roots sunk so deep in the soil of this city, we could not imagine ever leaving. Though I assisted my partner with work, we gradually came to seek out our own time, and so grew apart. Yet, we were satisfied. Why need this life ever end?

" 'Several years after beginning our life in Nabudis, there came a call for soldiers from the city watch. We had, by this time, made something of a name for ourselves, and so did a summons come to us. We were not born in this city of Nabudis, yet our love for the town knew nothing of this, and we accepted without delay. I was given to the border patrol, my partner to the defense of the city wall. The night before I was to leave, we ate a splendid meal and drank such wine as we could afford. It was as though we knew it would be our last meal together.' "

Daina stopped. A conjecture of where this was headed made her unequal to reading farther.

"Is that it?" Vaan asked. He came forward and tugged the journal out of her hands. He saw there was more, but when he looked curiously at Daina, she turned away her head, letting her hair fan across her face.

Vaan picked up the narrative: " 'The days of my patrol were harsh, yet we finished our duties, and weeks later, had only to return. That night, I dreamt. My partner came to me, trying to tell me something, yet I could hear nothing but the blowing of a distant wind. Perhaps I became homesick as I slept, for when I awoke, my eyes were wet with tears.' " Vaan paused, his nose screwed up, but then tenaciously read on. " 'In the dream, my partner had been unchanged, a perfect memory. Our feet turned home, all our thoughts flying down the road ahead of us, faster than we might hope to walk, back toward Nabudis.

" 'What awaited us upon our return was not a hero's welcome, but despair. Gone were the beautiful palisades, gone were the families and friends that surely awaited us. Only a wasted, blasted land remained.' "

Vaan swallowed, his face going gray. " 'Then we saw the people of Nabudis, though to call them that is a jape of the bitt'rest sort. They were the walking dead, hungering for life, and consuming all they found that was light and good. We fought them to save our own lives, and we wept.

" 'Then, among the dead, I saw him. And I could fight no more.' "

He looked up. "That's all there is."

By this time, Daina was crying, with such heartbreak as she had not experienced since she was a little girl. Her father – her mother! Their fates were clearer to her than ever before. Helpless, voiceless sobs wracked her body, and she buried her face in her knees.

"Daina?" Vaan crouched by her side, patting her shoulder awkwardly.

"Let her be," Basch said quietly. "Such grief must be allowed to run its course."

". . . Yeah."

There was such understanding in their voices. Daina made an effort to control herself, hiccupping. Calmer, she dried her eyes and stood. She took the journal back from Vaan, closed its broken cover over the loose pages, and placed it with her other supplies.

"Nothing can bring them back," Vaan said dully. He wasn't talking about the people of Nabudis.

Daina glanced at Basch. If he had been irritated with her before, he showed no sign of it now. Their failure mocked them with reproofs: Rasler. Reks. The unknown writer of the journal. Basch's twin brother.

"We're still here," she said to Vaan. "As long as we remember them, they'll never truly be gone."

Ashe drifted toward the palace like a soul headed for the gates of the abyss. Fran cut her off, putting her hands on her hips.

"Is it revenge that you desire?" she sharply asked. "Yes or no, not this way lies the capital. The road to Archades leads east of Salikawood, beyond the Phon Coast and Tchita Uplands."

The two women frowned at each other, almost in challenge.

Without a word, Ashe spun on her heel and marched away, her face set in unhappy lines. They returned to the Salikawood to find a path that would reunite them with Penelo and Balthier.


	44. Walk of Stolen Truths

Daina smelled the sea before she saw it.

In spite of the disrepair into which the tree roads had fallen, or where they had fallen away altogether, they arrived at the gate that led into Archadia proper nearly the same time the craftsmoogles finished repairing it, and got to watch the massive gears roll the gate out of the way. A sea breeze blew through the fissure, laden with salt and sun, and the merchants, who had schedules to keep, cheered.

There was no Mist here. Tall palm trees connected the sparkling white sand and long green grass with the endless, cloud-wisped blue sky.

Several Imperial patrol ships zoomed by, marring the tranquil scene.

"It would seem we made the right choice," Balthier observed quietly to Ashe and Daina. "If we'd taken the easy way and come by airship, one of those patrols would no doubt have been quick to roll out the red carpet. We're on the Empire's doorstep now, so we shouldn't have to worry quite so much, but that's no excuse to get sloppy. It is still a long road to the capital."

Vaan, who had not heard this, shouted, "Race you to the water!"

Daina giggled when he and Penelo dashed for the demarcation between waves and sand and began roughhousing. Vaan splashed Penelo, and she squealed, dancing away from him. He laughed.

The slow-moving caravan had not stopped, and Ashe and Balthier kept pace with it, but Daina impulsively ran after her friends.

Vaan pushed Penelo over, and she landed on her backside in the water.

"Hey!" she yelled, kicking at him.

"You Dalmascans." Daina grinned. "You don't know anything. Let me show you how it's done."

With that, she chopped her hand at the water, neither scooping nor slapping, a trick she had learned from swimming in cold, clear lakes during her childhood summers, and sent a huge wave at Vaan that smacked him right in the face. Penelo burst out laughing while he spluttered and coughed, shaking his wet blond hair. The three of them proceeded to engage in a water fight that drenched them in minutes. It was absolutely wonderful. Here, away from the Mist and the terrible vision of Nabudis, Daina let the saltwater disguise her tears. Laughing, she shielded her face when Vaan and Penelo united against her. She tried to run, calling her surrender.

She caught Basch's eye. He and Fran stood together, watching them play. The angle of the sun threw shadows across their faces, but she suspected the two adults were laughing at them.

She blushed, embarrassed because she was poised knee deep in the surf like a little kid.

Tired out from their brief war, she and the others waded onto shore, their clothes already drying in the sun, and they took up their posts with the caravan.

* * *

"He said that to you?" Daina stopped, shifting the box of wares to her other hip, and stared at her Lady. They were helping one of the merchants to unload, having reached the Hunter's Camp safely.

Ashe nodded. She spoke to her own box. "He's worried about me. He told me of his father, a scientist named Cidolfus Demen Bunansa, who works in the Draklor Laboratories, and how he ran away from home and his duties because his father was utterly consumed by his fascination with nethicite."

"So Balthier was a judge," Daina said thoughtfully. He was such a carefree and rather impatient sky pirate – she couldn't picture him in one of those suits of armor, but it made sense. His accent, his bearing, his expensive clothes, all the marks of an Archadian noble. And the Archadian elite were judges and judge magisters. Archadia was truly an empire of wealth and brutality.

"Yes." The two women reached one of the shanties and Ashe handed her box to the bangaa manning the station first. " 'The choice is yours to make. But don't give your heart to a stone. You're too strong for that, Princess.' Those were his words to me."

Her shoulders slumped, her face settling in familiar unhappy lines, as she twisted her wedding ring on her finger. "I am torn. I do not know what to do. The past is never far, and it blocks the future from me."

A heavy tread on the wooden steps reminded them of the bangaa merchant, and they paused, resuming their conversation only once the bangaa had gone back inside with Daina's box.

"My Lady, why do you lead us to the capital?"

"The nethicite." Ashe sighed, as if she had already told herself this many times over, to convince herself. "I must destroy it."

"Then that is what we will do."

Ashe's gray eyes studied her face, and Daina smiled as she said, "Listening to the advice of a former judge isn't the worst thing we can do, My Lady."

"Did you hear?" Vaan asked, trotting up to them, a pair of boxes perched precariously in his arms. "If we can defeat the monster in the Sochen Cave Palace, Clan Centurio will let us join the Hunt Club."

"The Hunt Club?" Ashe tried (unsuccessfully) to hide her smile, her tone asking _What is that_? "You have time for such things, do you?"

"Yeah!" Vaan's eyes were big and excited. "This camp's full of headhunters –"

"All right, there's been some confusion on this point, so I want to get it straight right now, for the record," the bangaa interrupted vehemently, putting his clawed hands on his hips, making all three of them jump. His sensitive ears twitched. " 'Headhunters' are fellows who capture criminals for bounty. 'Hunters' are them what hunt marks – them being creatures and the like – for rewards." He paused, inserting a finger under his blindfold and scratching thoughtfully. "Now, there was talk once of this headhunter, a bangaa, and a cruel, evil fellow who'd do anything for a little coin. They said he was working in secret for one of them judges up in Archades! Justice . . . heh. I haven't heard much talk of him lately, but headhunters that mean don't die easy. He's probably laying low somewhere, most like."

The bangaa finally relieved Vaan of his teetering burden, and Vaan opened his mouth. Daina whacked him in the arm, shaking her head, and he closed it again.

Balthier, with all of his inexplicable knowledge, had been a judge. She well remembered the battle in Lhusu Mines, and its uncertain conclusion. It sounded as though she'd just learned who Ba'Gamnan really was, and why he was after their friend. The last thing they needed right then was for the truth to spread.

Each lost in their own thoughts of a most uncertain future and pasts that held nothing but pain, the three teenagers returned to the wagons for more cargo.


	45. Halls of Ardent Darkness

She soon discovered that Vaan fully intended to join the Hunt Club.

"It'll be okay," he insisted. "I'll go, and hunt the mark in Sochen, and then come back for you when it's safe. Balthier says the Cave Palace is how we'll sneak into Archades, so we have to clear it out anyway."

The Hunter's Camp was noisy this evening. The afternoon's rain had sent everyone indoors until the clouds dispersed near sunset, and the cooking fires bloomed like bright orange flowers against the damp sand, offering minimal heat. Daina drew her coat closer, crossing her arms over her middle. She glanced at the women's tent, where Ashe, who had contracted a cold, was resting. She wondered if she could procure some hot broth for her Lady, whose appetite had faded with the day.

"Balthier will go with you?" Basch asked.

"And Penelo and Fran. They're waiting. Balthier says we can reach the Tchita Uplands tonight."

Basch considered this, and then said, "All right. I will explain this to Her Majesty."

"Thanks, Basch!" Vaan yelled, and then he turned and ran off.

Daina giggled, but then she sobered. "Are you sure?"

"Aye. We will not be delayed by the effort." He looked at her. "It will be a few days before Lady Ashe is well enough to travel again."

"True." Daina cast one last look at the tent, and then began walking toward the vendor of goods, the obnoxious hume woman who spoke as much with her hands as her mouth. She gave the same lecture to Daina about the need for remedies, vaccines, and smelling salts, which "any good hunter would take into the field," every time Daina tried to speak with her about her order. Daina listened patiently, and then made her inquiry.

"Yes, yes," the vendor said, leaping off her platform. She grabbed Daina's arm to lead her, saying, "Right this way. You'll want to see his progress, yes. And you!" She stopped, whipping around to confront Basch. "This way, the armor smith wanted to speak to you, something about the damascus – or was it the adamantine? Go on, he's right over there, dear," she finished at Daina, waving her off at the same time she shooed Basch in the opposite direction.

Daina grinned. Basch, always so courteous, looked as if he didn't quite know how to deal with a woman like the vendor.

He was a big boy. He'd figure it out. Cheerfully, Daina sought out the weapon smith on her own. He seemed pleased to see her, coming out of his hut, wiping his blackened hands on his apron before he offered her one to shake, and then bowed her inside. The iga blade, which she had commissioned to replace the ashura, was a marvelous piece of work, even incomplete. Its handle fit perfectly in her hand, its length the proper distance from her wrist to her elbow, a testimony to the smith's expertise. Ashe's platinum sword wasn't close to completion, however; Daina handed over the measurements he'd requested, thanked him for his hard work, and then left to try her luck on one of the cooks.

As she expected, Ashe was lying on her cot in an attitude of languor, her breathing labored, her skin flushed with fever. Daina tried to make her comfortable, offering the broth, piling her with blankets, and closing all of the tent's flaps tightly to reduce the light.

Perhaps the absence of Penelo and Fran was a good thing, Daina reflected, wandering alone down to the water. It gave her Lady the chance to sleep in peace. As for herself, Daina wasn't tired yet. It had been a slow week here in the Hunter's Camp while everyone restocked and had their equipment upgraded, and then with Ashe falling ill.

Daina trudged over a dune, the grass licking at her ankles like nidhogg's tongues, and then she half slid down the other side. She could no longer see the camp, so she settled in the sand, hugging her knees, and watched the black water surge and recede. Above her, the clouds floated on the night wind, sometimes allowing the moon to peek through, and when it did, its light pierced the waves, turning them a phosphorescent green. She saw some black and white piranhas swimming languidly above the waves, their outthrust lower jaws crammed with wicked fangs, but since none of them offered to come in to shore to feed, she watched them complacently.

With the salty breeze ruffling her hair and the sound of the surf in her ears, Daina relaxed. Her mind wandered.

As always, she thought of the last two years, everything she and Ashe had gone through, and of Basch.

Basch. She blushed – she could feel the heat of her skin and buried her face in her knees. It was so stupid. But – sitting there alone – where no one could see her or hear her – in such a romantic setting, she began to sing. Love songs, silly and serious both, pouring her whole heart into the melodies, imagining him sitting beside her.

"May I join you?"

Face burning hotter than ever, Daina leapt to her feet.

Regret crossed Basch's face, and he lifted a hand, as if to soothe a skittish chocobo. "I didn't mean to startle you."

"You didn't," she blurted, and then winced. Stupid! Why in Ivalice would she court such a blatant lie? "I mean, it's fine. I just didn't hear you come up."

"I didn't want to interrupt you," he said in his low, rough voice, and Daina shivered. Fortunately, he was settling himself cross-legged in the sand and didn't notice. "Your songs are beautiful."

Daina hesitated, but then she boldly sat next to him, both of them staring across the sea. However, she couldn't bring herself to sing any more, and instead said, "Vaan's greatest ambition is to become a sky pirate. He wants to make a name for himself."

"I'd say he's well on his way," Basch said drily. "If he starts hunting rare marks, he'll get his name in the Clan Annals."

Daina smiled at her hands, lax in her lap. "He'll do it, too. I think getting out of Rabanastre was the best thing he could have done."

Next to her, Basch shifted. Their shoulders touched.

He was warm. She bowed her head, hiding behind her hair. Gooseflesh erupted on her arms, but she made no effort to put more space between them.

Neither did he.


	46. Athroza Quicksands

Her heart leapt. In the last few days she'd felt the imaginary ravine dwindling, but she hadn't allowed herself to hope that he might have come to care for her. Certainly, this was the first time since that disastrous night in the Zertinan Caverns that they'd been alone together.

"Daina," he said, and then hesitated.

She looked up, and promptly forgot what they'd been talking of. She was trapped in amber, unable to move. Those intense eyes darkened, and, slowly, he bent his golden head and put his lips to hers.

It was a gentle kiss this time, chaste and so unbearably sweet she thought she was going to drown in it. Their foreheads touched, an unrepentant curl of his hair lying over her closed eyes. His fingers brushed her cheek, over and over, so lightly, as if he thought she would break, and she trembled, wanting more. The night was theirs.

"I love you," she whispered.

As soon as the words left her mouth, she knew it was a mistake.

He froze, and then sat back, his face as alarmed as that of a man waking from a nightmare. "No."

That one little word held so much power, to deny, to destroy. Daina caught her breath on a sob, gritted her teeth, and waited for the emotion to pass. She loved him, and the words could never be unsaid, nor did she wish to take them back.

"I'm too old for you," he said, with an edge of desperation.

"It doesn't matter," she said through her teeth.

"What is there for two such as us?" He gathered his legs under him and stood. "Do not waste yourself on me –"

"Because when I am thirty-five, you'll be over fifty?" she challenged. "I've already considered that. Don't think me a fool."

He frowned, but she had started, and couldn't stop. Everything she'd wanted to say to him came flooding out of her, her temper keeping the tears at bay. "I don't understand you. You tell me that our ages are too dissimilar, but when has it prevented us from talking like rational adults? When has it interfered with our duties, with our ability to fight, with our judgment and counsel for Her Majesty? Do you see a child when you look at me?"

She could read it in his face, as clear as if he'd shouted at her: No, he did not see a child.

Suddenly, she realized how she must have appeared to him after the solitude and torture of the oubliette – his salvation in the form of a young woman in a Dalmascan uniform. Balthier and Vaan may have been the first non-Imperial humes he'd seen in two years, but she and Fran were definitely the first women. Any heterosexual man would have been struck in such a circumstance.

In spite of herself, despite the answer she expected and was receiving, she blushed. "Don't you want to live, Basch? Don't you want to love someone, to be with her as you grow older? Don't you want – a . . ." She floundered, aghast at her own audacity, but her pride spurred her forward. "What about a family of your own? Or do you expect to die for Ashe before this is over, and finish what Vayne started two years ago?"

"You have your life to live," he said, his expression severe. She'd made him mad. "I will live mine as I see fit. Forgive my intrusion. I meant no offense to you."

In disbelief, Daina jumped to her feet. His mouth – that mouth! – met her eyes, and then she yanked her gaze upward.

"_Offense_?" she shrieked. If he was truly angry, good. It was something, a kind of score for her. She wanted to make him feel. Even if she couldn't make him love her, if she could make him feel _anything_ it would help ease the pain. He was a knight, courteous to the very core of his being. She aimed her verbal barbs there. "So that is how you see me – just a girl to dump your frustrated _affections_ on, because nothing better has presented itself. I should have expected it, I suppose, but I assumed a knight above such debauchery. In which case, I have no one to blame but myself, because you certainly can't be held responsible for a man's needs. I thank you for the lesson."

That little speech did it. The color left his face, but he wasn't only appalled – he was furious. "Lady –"

"_Leave me alone_!" She glared at him across three feet of sand. "Don't come any closer to me than that. In fact, it would be best if you didn't come near me at all."

"As you wish." With military precision, he executed a slight bow and then walked away, whatever he'd been about to say, lost.

* * *

Daina wasn't surprised when she woke the next morning to a sore throat and an aching head. With a groan, she rolled over, but was too shaky and weak from fever to sit up.

She didn't see Basch for the four days it took the virus to run its course, for she had neither the strength nor the inclination to leave the tent. This left her time to think, and to regret her abyssal temper.

Words were dangerous things. Hurtful. Misleading.

_Leave me alone_!

She had no doubt that Basch would do just that, because she'd done her damnedest to insult him in every way imaginable.

_I love you_.

That was the truth, unshakable, undeniable, and totally impossible to do away with.

Shivering, Daina ducked her head under her blankets, miserable with illness. But she was forming a new strategy, and that helped, a little. If words were not to be trusted, then actions would have to do. The way he touched her, like holding a piece of spun glass, gave her the impression that he viewed her as something delicate and fragile. Perhaps other women he'd known had been thus. Daina was not. She was strong and independent; she did not need a man to protect her. What she wanted was a companion to stand with her.

She just needed to show him that.


	47. Gate of Earth

On the morning of the fifth day, their friends returned from their successful hunt. She and Ashe, recovered, went out to meet them, and Vaan's triumphant grin rivaled the dawn for brilliance.

While Vaan went to report the slaying of the mandragoras that had been holed up in Sochen to the huntmaster, Daina debated asking Balthier about Ba'Gamnan, but they hadn't heard so much as a peep out of the headhunter since Bhujerba, and she decided to leave well enough alone. Besides, the sky pirate seemed distracted and cross. She didn't want to exacerbate his mood.

They hired chocobos to carry them as swiftly as possible through the northern stretch of Phon Coast and the Tchita Uplands, although they had to set the birds loose at the entrance to the Sochen Cave Palace. Penelo combed her fingers through a chocobo's chest feathers while Vaan tied up its reins, out of the way of grasping shrubs and the bird's own legs.

"Will they be all right?" she asked worriedly.

"They will be fine," Ashe assured her, giving her chocobo one last pat before she turned its head for the Hunter's Camp. "They'll find their way home. _Hyah_!" She slapped its rump, and with a _wark_, the chocobo broke into a run. The others, _wark_ing in chorus, followed, to be picked up by any hunter in possession of a peck of gysahl greens with which to tempt them. Then, she turned and eyed the cave mouth, narrow and tall, its depth lost in the gloom of the underground.

Vaan confidently led the way into the cave, descending the loamy slope to a broad natural cavern bristling with stalagmites and stalactites and a few zombie knights. Fran, who wore a bangle around her wrist that allowed her to see the unseen, warned them of long-standing traps, and they moved slowly and carefully along the right hand wall. Bioluminescent moss interrupted the cavern's darkness. Using its light, Vaan navigated them to an opulent set of doors, set directly into the cave wall. Beyond the doors, an empty room, about the dimensions of a ballroom, cracked, dirty tiles on the floor and pillars by the walls, greeted them with silence.

"Hey," he said, as if this thought had just occurred to him, "you sure this rabbit hole's really the way into Archades?"

"Better a hare unseen than a rat in a trap." Balthier put his hands on his hips and cocked his head. "Then again, if you'd prefer to go knocking on the front gates of the city, be my guest."

"But what about once we're inside?" Penelo asked. "Won't the city watch find us?"

Ashe crossed her arms over her middle. "We'll do what we can to blend into the crowd. Our names may be notorious, but our faces are not far-known."

"True, true," Vaan said. "You're our princess, and we didn't even recognize you."

Ashe's arms dropped and she sighed. "I noticed."

Everyone walked at their own paces, attacking beasts that came near, their group thinning out and collecting like soap bubbles on the breath of a child. Aside from the empty ballroom and two or three passages in remarkably good repair, most of the palace seemed nothing more than an underground cave network, the walls plastered with the phoshorescent moss and the tunnels infested with imps, pit fiends, gorgimeras, and focalors. Larger, arcane monstrosities guarded the doors, as well: Strikers, which were once men, poisoned, their heads removed, sporting heavily-magicked necklaces that kept their wills enslaved, and wendigos, the reanimated corpses of the drowned. Talk fell to a minimum as the party battered their way forward.

Daina treated it all like a cathartic training exercise. She slashed at the imps' vestigial wings and parried the pit fiends' spears, hacked and thrust at the rolling gorgimeras before they could shake out their heads and wings like bizarre children's toys, and got soaked by a mineral-laden waterfall when a focalor snapped its jaws shut inches from her knee and she leapt sideways to avoid an amputation. The water smelled bad, old and musty, like wet rock, but she merely shook her hair out of her face and slew the giant fish.

Although those who fought at her side changed as the landscape sloped upward and the tunnels narrowed, while it was sometimes Vaan and Penelo aiding her, sometimes Ashe, Balthier, or Fran, Basch never came near. She clenched her teeth against her own stupidity, but was wise enough to admit to herself that it was probably for the best.

When they reached a dead end, Daina tilted her face upward. She could feel a breeze swirling down, but it wasn't exactly fresh. To her right, Balthier wiped the dust off a pedestal, and then pushed something in its top. From above, a platform, the underside of which was set with skystone, came to a graceful halt on the ground. Ashe led the way onto the lift, and it was big enough to hold all seven of them. Once they were on board, the platform rose on its own, as lightly as a butterfly.

On the top floor, they passed through a corridor and another opulent door, and then –

"Smells less like a capital, and more like a sewer," Vaan said bluntly.

"Even empires have need of sewers," Balthier said. He was smirking again, but his tone was too sweetly mordant, like syrup hardening on a table. "The runoff from Archades proper pools here: Those who lack papers to live in the city itself. The mighty who have fallen, and the fallen who would be mighty. Their eyes never leave Archades."

Vaan looked puzzled. "I guess it must be a lot nicer than this place," he said, and Daina understood. Everything in the slum was rundown, forgotten, and abandoned, even the people dotted here and there like drab wildflowers. Weeds pushed up between the cobbles, and most walls stood independent of any kind of roof.

"Oh, to be sure." Balthier shrugged. "Archades reeks of a different filth. Let's be off! We can follow our noses to Draklor."

All Daina could detect was the vaguely metallic odor emanating from her damp coat. She and Basch edged closer to Lady Ashe, shielding the princess from the worst of the poverty and the hungry eyes of the denizens in Old Archades, one knight to either side. They would be out of these alleys soon enough, and on their way to the Dusk Shard. They wouldn't have to put up with this depressing place for long.

However, none of them had counted on the Imperial soldiers guarding the stairway that led into the city, and who would not let them pass without papers.

Stymied, they looked at one another.

"What now?" Vaan wondered.


	48. Periphery

"Well, well, well. There's a sight for sore eyes."

Startled, Daina turned around. A tall, dark-haired hume walked by her, his gaze fixed on Balthier, and the only word that came to mind was _pedantic_. His manner of speech, his half-lidded eyes, the wide smirk topped by the thinnest of greasy moustaches – if it weren't for his ragged, mismatched apparel, she'd have pegged him for a politician.

"Didn't think I'd be seeing you again. Not here," the long-faced hume added.

Balthier rolled his eyes heavenward. "Oh wonderful. Enter the streetear."

"A pirate would do well to smile," the other drawled. "Wouldn't want to sour his reputation."

"You know this guy?" Vaan asked.

"An old . . . friend," Balthier said with a slight hesitation. "He's a streetear – a peddler of rumor and hearsay, by the name of Jules. He'd bite a gil given him by his own mother, and shave it by half to pay for her funeral."

Jules grinned. "Sometimes an ear with tight purse string's the order of the day. Like when a pirate decides he fancies going _up_ in the world."

"To the city?" Vaan perked up at once. "You know a way?"

"In Archades," Jules said, holding up a finger like a professor in a lecture hall, "knowledge is power. And power has a way of opening doors, boy. Now, a fool will buy a sack of feathers for his pillow, but a wise man, he'll buy the whole stinking cockatrice and get his fill of meat into the bargain. So, wise man, how does 1500g sound?"

Many of them might have protested, Balthier and Daina included, but Vaan, always impatient, cleaned out his wallet and paid the streetear. With an ostentatious bow, Jules disappeared.

"Wait!" Vaan pelted after him.

Balthier sighed.

They never did catch up to Jules directly, but caught glimpses of him, talking to the Old Archadians, whispering in their ears, his face as smug as a basilisk's. A fight broke out among the degenerates, and the resulting noise brought the two guards running – leaving the stairway clear. Like a magician from a puff of smoke, Jules reappeared, holding out his hands for praise.

"Now's our chance! Thanks, Jules." Vaan waved and ran. Penelo, Ashe, and Basch followed him.

Balthier, however, made his graceful way to the streetear's side, who was watching the arrests with amusement. "Never thought you'd go for such a meager price," Balthier observed.

"A pirate should know that words are worth gil uncountable," Jules returned. "Here's some words for you: The prodigal Bunansa son's come back to the Imperial roost. See? Words of much value, these."

Balthier's expression darkened, but he did nothing more than throw up his hands and follow Vaan, with Fran and Daina in his wake.

* * *

Where Nabudis had been lush and green, and Rabanastre was white like a pearl disgorged on a bed of sand, the Imperial City of Archades was red.

_Skyscrapers_, Balthier called them. And that was what they seemed like – great buildings of russet brick straining for the clouds, raking their tops against the very sky. Personal hovercraft and public cabs swooped among the spires like doves on the wing, the traffic in the air rivaling the pedestrian traffic on the ground. The nobles of Archades were beautiful and elegant, the men in form-fitting suits of many layers, the women in long, flowing skirts and armbands of gold, platinum, and tortoiseshell.

Penelo gave Vaan's kidneys a poke. "You're gaping like a fish out of water."

"I'm just checking out the city," he said as he leaned over a barricade, the better to see the levels below them. Then, he shrugged at her. "Even if it _is_ the Empire."

"You've changed, Vaan." Penelo brushed back one of her braids. "You were always marching to your own beat. Impatient, even. In a good way."

"Maybe it's because I've seen more now. Never imagined I'd ever come this far away from home." Vaan hopped down, brightening. "Hey, Larsa's here in the city, isn't he? He's a tough one. I wonder how he's doing."

"You always were a soft touch, Vaan," Penelo said. Her sweet smile flashed. "You know what's amazing? I thought I'd go my whole life without meeting people like the princess, or Lord Larsa. And here we are in the capital!"

"I know! It's a little over my head sometimes."

"Good, Vaan." Basch clapped the boy on the shoulder. "You've come to understand the difficulties of serving royalty."

"Hey, I'm just along for the ride."

Penelo ducked under the knight's elbow. "That wasn't a complaint was it, Basch?" she asked mischievously.

Basch made an embarrassed noise. "Right. Let's get moving."

"Hey, don't change the subject!"

"Right," he said again, and laughed when Penelo did.

Daina bit her lip on a smile. _Walked right into that one_. For all his age, he could be just as awkward as the kids.

Ashe was also watching this exchange, her face alight. The two women shared hopeful smiles, and they would have moved on, but Balthier abruptly sighed, and then squared his shoulders.

"We go our separate ways here, Vaan. I've some business to attend to. We'll meet again later."

With a quick step, he walked away, and the crowds swallowed him.

"Huh? Hey –" Vaan stared forlornly after him.

Daina, who had assessed Fran's lack of reaction, touched his arm. "It doesn't matter. Let's find our way to Draklor."

It wasn't easy. Archades had risen out of its original municipal layout so that many places simply could not be reached by foot – including, they found, the imposing edifice of Draklor, which started sixty stories up. Through some backtracking, they managed to move from the Trant district into Molberry, however, and reached a taxi station.

Vaan hailed a cab.

The cabbie gave him a once over that took in his dusty clothes, his obvious adventurer's mien, and said, "Only those with nine or more chops may ride this cab, boy. Nothing personal, I assure you."

"A chop?" Vaan repeated, baffled. "What's that?"

"If you lack a chop, you pay coin," the cabbie said, as if relenting. "That's 1000000g, thank you."

"What?" Penelo exclaimed. "That's crazy!"

Daina saw him coming. As if fearful of contamination, the thick crowds parted around him, for he was just as ragged as ever, so she moved protectively in front of her Lady. Jules, however, had eyes only for Vaan.

"Having a spot of trouble, are we?" He stopped, as if thinking. "I've a message from Master Balthier. He's waiting in Central. He says to come quickly."

"On this?" Perplexed, Vaan gestured at the cab. "But we need a . . . a chop. What is a chop, anyway?"

Jules grinned. "When a boy wants information," he said, waggling his fingers, "that's right, a boy pays. 2500g sounds about right."


	49. Garden of Decay

Two and a half thousand gil was a lot less than a million, but it still didn't feel right. "Should we let him do this?" Daina asked Ashe in a low voice.

"We have little other choice," Ashe answered, but she sighed, her brows creased in worry.

Daina silently appealed to Basch, but he shook his head. Ashe was right. They were strangers in a strange land, as the saying went.

The gil clinked in Jules's palm. "Why, any upstanding citizen of the Empire carries a chop," he said at once. "It's a mark of status sometimes, a writ of transit others. If you were aiming to go to Central, where the gentry live, I'd think you'd need nine chops."

"How do you get them?"

"Like I've said, the key is knowledge, boy. You do your part here on the street, talk to the right people, you'll earn your chops in no time."

Vaan scrubbed a hand through his hair. "That doesn't sound so bad."

"Oh, the people in Archades love doing good deeds," Jules said with an affected laugh. "Why, if they're helping you out, it must mean they're _superior_. Understand, boy?"

"Uh . . . Not sure I do, but I'll give it a try." Vaan grinned. "Thanks, Jules!"

He ran over to the princess and her knights. "Well, what are we waiting for?"

"I don't think this is a job suited for Her Majesty," Daina said, reverting to her original role as Ashe's personal guard and aide. Frankly, she couldn't see herself doing it, either. Diving into a rumor mill, fishing out information, and then relaying it to these empty sheep in the hopes one would tip her with a chop as if she were an orphan in need of food – she shuddered.

"That's okay," Vaan said, undaunted. "Me and Penelo can go. Right Penelo?"

"Of course," Penelo said immediately. The two ran off, excitedly discussing how best to tackle their chore.

Daina sighed. The stench of the slums did not reach here, but she couldn't help agreeing with Balthier's earlier assessment. Something was rotten in the Empire's capital city. The sooner they got to Draklor and destroyed the Dusk Shard, the better. She could not bear the thought of Rabanastre adopting this veneer of wealth and happiness, which barely concealed the strain the citizens constantly lived under. She turned with solicitude to Ashe. "My Lady, shall we find somewhere to wait for them?"

"Yes," Ashe said. She was pale. She turned to go, but her step faltered, and Basch offered her an arm to lean on, which she took.

_She must not be feeling well_, Daina thought, watching them head toward one of Molberry district's sidewalk cafés. Then, remembering that there was one more in their little party, she turned to look for Fran.

She was near the streetear. Jules was complacently watching Vaan and Penelo join the throng of ardents, but Fran . . .

The viera's reddish eyes were narrow, her pouting lips pursed, as she stared a hole through the hume's head. Jules coughed, but did not acknowledge her. With a flick of her ponytail, Fran marched away. She drew many glances after her, but the tall woman returned none of them, her head high, her heels striking brick.

"Fran?" Daina looked for Jules, but the streetear was already gone, so she hurried after Fran to join Ashe and Basch at the café.

It took the two Dalmascan teens over an hour to appropriate enough chops for them all, and Daina, after paying 5g for a cup of tea, sat in the café without appetite, watching the crowds go by. The four of them tried several subjects, mainly centered on Balthier's mysterious errand, the state of Archades, and their plan for discovering and eradicating the shards, but without success. Ashe had nothing to say beyond one murmur about Balthier, and Fran even less, which left Daina and Basch to carry the conversation. He did not seem angry any longer, but he was cooler than before. Once, in the beginning of this journey, Daina would have been glad for that, but now, she longed to apologize for her behavior. Unfortunately, the trial was doomed from the start. Privacy wasn't an option, not with Ashe and Fran cramped around the same spindly table. She stared gloomily into her teacup.

The cab ride went a little better, although the hovercraft did not have any kind of window, which made Daina feel claustrophobic for the first time in her life. Fortunately, Balthier was waiting for them in the Tsenoble district.

"Ah, so pleased you could join me," he said, sauntering up to them. "Jules had a morsel for us: A light airship used by Draklor researchers is just up ahead. We'll take that and go in through the service entrance. Let's make haste, shall we?"

He seemed more agitated than ever. Basch walked beside him, and Daina could see them talking while they led the way northeast.

At the appearance of some Imperial soldiers on the quick-march, everyone backed against the side of a building except Ashe, who ran forward to stand with Basch, and Daina, who followed her like her shadow. The soldiers stopped and saluted a lower judge.

"The complices of the Senate have been quelled, Your Honor," one of the soldiers reported. "Our forces sustained but light casualties."

"You have leave to withdraw. One detachment will remain here to guard Draklor."

The soldiers saluted once more and then departed, while the judge entered the building.

Guard Draklor! _But how are we to get in_? Daina wondered.

Vaan frowned, peeling himself off the wall. "Do you think they're on to us?"

"It would seem not," Basch said, "though this will make our task more difficult still."

Ashe clenched her fists and strode up to the lone soldier guarding the entrance, but he rebuffed her, sternly announcing that no one was allowed into Central at this time. Defeated, Ashe returned to them.

"Certainly took your time getting here, didn't you," Balthier grumbled as they meandered back toward the taxi station. "Off seeing the sights, perhaps?"

"Not likely," Vaan snorted. "Do you know how long it took to get the chops to get up here?"

Balthier blinked. "What's that? But I _gave_ Jules some chops."

"Jules!" Vaan spat the name like an epithet, but it was more than that. It was a warning. Though he looked like he belonged face down in the gutter, the streetear seemed comfortable among the higher echelons of Archades.

Ashe had seen the snollygoster too, and she frowned, standing by Balthier's side with Fran, Daina and Vaan to their right, Penelo partly hiding behind Basch on the left, presenting a unified front against the streetear.


	50. Ice Field of Clearsight

"A squad of judges has been sent to Draklor," Jules said with mock solemnity, perfectly unconcerned with their glares. "You'll find the service entrance a difficult proposition, I'm afraid."

"Your doing, no doubt," Balthier snapped. "You knew the Ministry of Law would move, so you had Vaan out collecting chops until the judges could reinforce Draklor. Of course." He grimaced. "Tell me, how much did the Ministry pay for word of the prodigal son?"

Jules raised his eyebrows, but the sleepy-basilisk gleam did not leave his eyes. "The Ministry? Oh, judges make poor customers, my friend. Too many rules, too many laws. Perhaps you didn't know, Master Balthier, that Draklor is a toy box these days, filled with your Lord Father's conceits. All developed without the Senate's knowledge, of course. Why, not even the emperor knew the full extent of Dr. Cid's operations. Now, here's the catch: Since Vayne had himself declared dictator, nary a peep has come out of that laboratory. I know people who would sell their own mum for the merest scrap of information about the goings-on inside Draklor."

"People like Rozarrian sympathizers worried about the Empire's weapons programs, and anyone else who might be opposed to House Solidor hegemony."

Daina felt a flare of pride for Balthier. He was angry, but still in command of himself, and by _not_ glancing at Ashe, had started to pull control of the situation toward himself.

"So," he continued, "we create a disturbance, and you get your windfall of dirt on Draklor."

Jules bobbed his head. "And in exchange for your service, I've spoken to a cabbie. When he asks where you want to go, tell him: 'You know where to go.' Simple, no?"

"Ah, a deal, brokered in true Archades fashion," Balthier sneered. "Why it's just like old times, Jules. Brings a tear to my eye."

With that, he stalked away, his irritation clear in every movement. Ashe went with him, giving him only one silent, meaningful look. Fran followed, and after a moment, so did Vaan and Penelo, with Basch herding them along.

"Good to be back, eh?" Jules said calmly. "My regards to your Lord Father, Master Ffamran . . . er, rather, Master 'Balthier.' "

Daina narrowed her eyes at the streetear, but she stayed only long enough to ensure he was not going to tailgate them, and in a swirl of her green coat, she pursued her friends.

Nobody seemed willing to break the uncomfortable silence as Balthier hailed a cab and they all piled inside (Daina not without some reluctance and a deep breath before she ducked through the door). Vaan, however, lost the battle with his curiosity.

"So, this Jules," he started with uncustomary hesitancy, casting a sidelong glance at the sky pirate. "Is he some old friend of yours, Balthier? You two seemed . . . close."

"Close enough for fisticuffs," Balthier said sardonically. "Driver! Faster, if you please. I would be loathe to expend any of the violence in my present mood on my companions."

"S-Sir?" came the confused voice from the front of the cab. "Yes, sir!"

Daina felt the increase in speed and altitude, and she grabbed a hand strap with an inaudible groan. Ashe took her other hand, but it was Basch's quizzical look that made her straighten up and say, in an admirably normal voice, "I'm fine."

She was better, of course, when the cab deposited them in Central in front of the towering structure that housed Draklor. The driver saw them all off his cab with relief, eyeing their weapons and dirty clothes, and he zoomed off with undisguised zeal in pursuit of more genteel customers.

"Where to?" Vaan asked.

"Come, this way!" Balthier took off with his rangy, loping stride. Daina drew the iga blade, holding it so that it lay along her forearm, and positioned her hand so that the green coat covered it. Fran was less subtle, stringing her traitor's bow and nocking an arrow as she ran gracefully after Balthier.

Their precautions seemed to be unnecessary. Without a signal, the seven of them slowed, and then they stopped altogether, looking uneasily around. The laboratory consisted of long tiled corridors and tinted windows that opened into white rooms scattered with unrecognizable machinery. Round portals glowed with blue or red light, some of them effectively blocking off all access to the corridors beyond, like bulkhead doors on a ship. Everything was completely devoid of life.

"It's too quiet," Basch murmured in his rough voice.

"Passing strange." Balthier put a hand to his hip, his betelgeuse dangling from the other. "There are supposed to be guards here."

"Maybe we're just lucky?" Vaan guessed, and Balthier _humphed_.

"Maybe you're just optimistic."

Basch drew his sword, and nodded at Ashe to do the same. "Something may be afoot. We proceed with caution."

"No time for caution," Balthier overrode him. "Step to it! Cid's chambers are on the top level."

It was Penelo who stumbled across the first body and yelped a warning. Several fallen soldiers lined the corridor, blood splattered across the pristine marble tiles. Daina peered around the corner, saw no one else, and darted into the next room, which held an elevator.

With an air of long familiarity, Balthier punched the button for the 67th floor, and when the doors whirred open once more, he jogged for a door on which a plaque had been affixed, bearing the initials 'C.D.B.' He kicked the door, which was already ajar.

"He's had visitors," Fran announced. "Ones lacking manners, by the look of it."

The room, a study, was in shambles.

"Someone after the nethicite?" Vaan wondered.

Overturned bookcases lay haphazardly over their shelves' contents. The desk's ransacked drawers hung at awkward angles, and loose, torn papers carpeted every inch of the floor. Slowly, Daina walked into the study, placing her boots cautiously. Like Basch and Ashe, she knelt by a pile of books and began sorting through them. Indecipherable scientific terms met her eye, and some of the books had also been written in, fine, spidery writing that filled the pages' margins.

Balthier stared down at the desk, the files strewn across its top. "The Jagd Difohr, was it?" he said under his breath, and Daina looked up. His practiced devil-may-care expression was cracking, allowing a little of his pain to leak through. "Six years, and ever since you got back, this. What madness found you there?"


	51. The Shred

They weren't given much time inside Dr. Cid's study. From the corridor, a shout froze them all.

"Up! Above us!"

"Drop bulkheads five and eight! Be to it!"

"They found us!" Alarmed, Vaan grabbed Penelo and thrust her behind him.

Fran's ear flicked. "His earlier visitors, more like. We should lie low for now."

"No." Balthier picked up a keycard from the desktop. "We'll use their confusion. We need to find Cid. Now."

With the keycard, Balthier opened locked bulkheads, leading them through the maze that was Draklor, until Daina was so turned around she couldn't have found her way out again if she'd tried. On top of that, the "confusion" didn't stop the swarm of Imperial soldiers that attacked them, and precious minutes ticked away to the sounds of fighting, sword on shield, gunfire, and the heavy breaths of the dying. The odor of ozone burned in Daina's nose as Imperial magi discharged fire and thunder magick.

The military wasn't the only hindrance. Ashe, seeking a red bulkhead release, once opened a door on an infestation of crazed lab rats. Daina wasn't afraid of any beastie, but she shuddered to think about what had been done to the vermin to make their eyes glow like little red coals.

They battled more soldiers and mages to gain control of the elevator, and once more, it carried them higher within the building.

It wasn't until Daina exited the elevator that she got her first real jolt of terror.

Basch was walking ahead of her. Abruptly, he stopped and dropped into a fighting crouch, all of his attention snapping to the left hand corridor and the thunder of booted feet rumbling from within. In an indistinct blur of twin blades, a large hume barreled at the knight as if he intended to perform a vivisection on the fly. The newcomer's swords sliced down; Daina's heart clawed its way into her throat and lodged there; Basch, in a magnificent display of reflexes, leaped backward. The scythe-like blades missed his stomach by inches.

The strange hume possessed excellent reflexes of his own. Unfazed by his target's agility, he twirled and kept coming, bringing one sword to bear in less than a second. He brought it down in a sweep that would have felled a tree, but Basch blocked it with a crack that made Daina fear for the bones in his arm. The two men struggled for a moment, neither gaining ground, until the stranger raised his bald head.

"Ah! My apologies," he said, sounding highly amused and not the least winded. His accent was Archadian, although Daina had never seen a hume of so dark a skin tone. "You bear not the stench of Cid's lackeys."

The strange hume was taller than Basch, and twice as broad as Vaan, and he had not let up the pressure. Basch grunted under the strain. "And you are," he grated, pushing back, "our earlier visitor."

"Yes, a valuable man, one I'd sooner not lose," a petulant male voice called. "Yet he knows too much."

Basch and the stranger broke apart. Daina remembered that she should breathe. The voice had come from the top of a darkened staircase, and when the speaker ceased, the dark stranger repositioned his swords and charged headlong up it.

Fran raised a long finger and inscribed a glowing blue sigil on the air. The cure magick swooped toward Basch, briefly imbuing his features with eldritch light. He grasped his forearm, twisting his wrist experimentally, and thanked her. Everyone gathered around him, concurrent in their shock. Basch, however, seemed ready to move on, unshaken by the case of mistaken identity and subsequent attempted murder, so Balthier led the way up the staircase.

Draklor's top floor was made up of one large rotunda, the dome's glistening windows open to the sky. Sunlight streamed in, hot and burnished. The dark-skinned man stood at the foot of a dais, glaring up at the hume man on top of it.

Daina's eyes widened. This man looked like an older version of Balthier, although his darker brown hair was shot with gray, he was softer around the middle, and a pair of spectacles pinched the bridge of his nose. He was smiling, the same abyss-take-all smile Balthier sometimes adopted, but his was cruel, where the pirate only achieved mocking.

"Cid!" the large man bellowed. His voice filled the rotunda. "You know deifacted nethicite brought down the _Leviathan_! How can you persist in this folly?"

"And you've come here to stop me?" Dr. Cid cocked his head. "I'd fain see you try."

"Consider your bones, old man," Balthier called. "You're outmatched."

At first, Cid smirked, but then antipathy won, wiping all mirth from his bearded face. "Pirate scum of the skies. What brings you here?"

"Treasure," Balthier said easily. "What else would a pirate want? We'll take the Dusk Shard."

It was like fencing with words. A true Archadian skill. Cid copied his son's pose, his mellifluous tones. "You've come all this way for that trinket? I thought you above this."

Then, he did something strange. He looked over his shoulder. "Hm? What's that?" Slowly, he turned back to them, his eyes gleaming behind his spectacles, and his face split in a wide grin. "Ah," he breathed. He appraised Ashe, but it didn't quite sound like he was speaking to her, with pauses between each statement. "The princess of Dalmasca come to visit? . . . She's not entirely without merit. . . . A test of sorts for our princess?"

"You're a babbling fool," Ashe said flatly, the first words she had spoken since they had entered Draklor. Daina shifted her grip on the iga blade, ready to leap in front of Ashe at the first hint of danger.

"A trial for Ashelia B'nargin Dalmasca!" Cid cried, throwing his arms out. "You lust for the stone's power, do you not?"

Ashe sharply sucked in her breath. Abruptly, the big, dark-skinned man stepped in front of the two women, blocking their view of Cid. "Lend him not your ears, m'Lady. He means to use you."

Like a low lying fog, or receding surf, twinkling Mist manifested and rolled toward the dais. From the walls, four mechanical rooks separated themselves and began flying around the rotunda, ever faster, their high whining like that of monstrous mosquitoes. Daina, Ashe, Vaan, and Penelo all backed into each other, braced by the shoulders of their friends, watching the progression of the rooks, now spinning so fast they seemed like a glossair ring, formed of one solid piece.

"Manufacted nethicite! Like Bergan," Fran spat, ever sensitive to the vagaries of Mist. She drew an arrow.

"How could you do this?" Balthier asked, almost begged. "How could you fall this far?"


	52. Reach of the Occult

The helm rooks, Daina discovered, were thought-driven combat weapons, capable of manipulating Mist. They responded to Cid like extensions of his body. Penelo and Fran unleashed twin blasts of aeroga at the scientist, and the rooks immediately released spells of their own. A glass-like shimmer surrounded Dr. Cid, and the magickal wind bounced off him, reflected twice over, slicing into Daina and the others instead. She shrieked in surprise and pain, and Ashe dropped to her knees, blood welling out of the gashes across her entire right side.

At a signal from Balthier, the men went after one of the rooks, decimating the machine, and then the sky pirate laughed. "Always hiding behind your toys," he called. "Pity if anything were to happen to them."

Cid replied with gunfire. The remaining rooks zigzagged in front of the scientist, protecting him. Daina had gotten the measure of their adversary, however. Fran and Balthier fell back, and Basch and Vaan moved forward, all four of them concentrating their attacks on a single rook.

"Here!" Penelo crouched by Ashe's side, curing her, and then she lightly tapped both Ashe and Daina with her multiscale.

Strength flowed through Daina's body like a drug in her bloodstream. A bravery effect, conferred by the multiscale's unique properties. She traded the iga blade for the longer, deadlier kogarasumaru. To her left, Ashe's sword joined Basch's, transforming a third rook into a smoking, sparking mess of metal. Daina, wielding her katana overhead, leapt at the final rook. She brought the sword down. It cleaved the rook, and its halves crashed to the marble floor.

She straightened, flicking excess energy off the kogarasumaru's curved blade, aware of her friends moving into position around her. One final enemy. She readied the blade.

Cid had shouted something when his last rook fell, but what, she didn't know. She could see him clearly now, no longer on the dais, a pair of energy rifles in his hands. She crouched, ready to spring.

He turned his back on them.

The oddness of the move was her only warning. Cid slapped the two rifles together and fired them simultaneously at the rotunda's far wall; only, it wasn't a marble wall any longer. Triangular reflector mirrors, previously hidden behind sliding panels, flared with brilliant golden light. The energy doubled, tripled, quadrupled, bounded and rebounded countless times, and the rotunda disappeared in a wave of agony. It was like a physical thing, slamming into Daina with all the force of an ocean breaker.

When it cleared, she found herself lying on her back, limbs askew, kogarasumaru missing. She turned her head, and then gasped. The floor tilted under her, threatening to dump her off the planet. Her eyes only saw red.

Death was close again, stealing over her skin in icy wavelets. Vaan. Penelo. Fran. Balthier. Were they alive, or dead?

Basch. Where was he?

_Where was Ashe_?

"Daina! Get up!"

She groaned, blinking, but the stubborn redness did not dissipate. The voice was insistent. "You have to get up before he does that again. Get up!"

Vaan. It was Vaan. Blindly, she grasped his arms, helped him pull her to her feet. A bottle met her lips, and she drank, coughing on the searing cinnamon flavor of the x-potion. Her heart galloped like a runaway leynir, her vision clearing with each rapid thump. Within seconds, she was standing with Vaan, Penelo, and Ashe, all haggard but breathing. The four teenagers clustered together, too wounded to continue the fight.

"Basch," she cried, hardly aware she said it aloud. Then she felt the Mist, saw the fulminating darkness of a quickening, and braced herself. Basch was all right, and he was going to defeat Cid.

"Heads up!" Balthier jeered. A tsunami of cerulean Mist reared up, blocking the sunlight, and when it plummeted, the entire building shook.

Dr. Cid slumped at the foot of the dais, his energy rifles drained and useless. Balthier holstered the betelgeuse and approached him.

Before he could do or say anything, the dark-skinned Archadian man from earlier appeared out of nowhere, jumped into the air, and, roaring, descended on the helpless Cid.

A blue barrier flared to life around the scientist, the telltale sign of a paling, and when the stranger impacted it, it blew him backward. Stiffly, Cid stood up, straightening his sleeves.

"Venat, you shouldn't have," he said, a little breathlessly.

A shimmering in the air: At Cid's shoulder, a strange, white creature coalesced. It lacked arms and legs, and made Daina think of an elaborately engraved iron maiden. The black pit of its face was interrupted by two burning, flame-white eyes. Was _that_ what he had been speaking to earlier?

Balthier had gone very pale. Throat working, he managed to say, "This creature . . . So this is your Venat?"

The apparition faded, and Cid ignored his son.

"Ashelia B'nargin Dalmasca!" he yelled. "Just how far will you go for power? Does your lust for nethicite consume you?" He showed them his hands, and an angry little snarl escaped Ashe. He held the Dusk and Midlight Shards, neither blackened nor dormant but shining with power. "Am I right?" he asked eagerly. "I am, aren't I. A worthy daughter of the Dynast-King! You would do well to go to Giruvegan. Who knows? You may receive a new stone for your trouble."

The rotunda's roof opened like those of the hangars in an Aerodrome. On a hot wind, an atomos descended, and Cid swung himself aboard.

"Your words mean nothing to me!" Ashe belatedly shouted, proving the opposite to everyone present.

"The reins of history back in the hands of man. I too make for Giruvegan," he said slyly. "Give chase if you dare it!"

The atomos lifted, carrying Dr. Cid away. He was gone, leaving them to lick their wounds in sullen silence.

Balthier grimaced, his face tilted up. "I hate it when he does that."

"Mayhap you think me remiss! The Lady Ashe of Dalmasca?" a deep voice boomed, and Ashe turned to meet the stranger. He approached her, strapping his swords crosswise to the harness on his back, brushing by Daina and Vaan as if he had not earlier threatened to kill one of their number. "The sky pirate Reddas, at your employ."

Daina had time to really take in his appearance now, and she coughed on a laugh. They were flamboyant, these sky pirates. The bald man wore a loose white shirt, its collar flared and sleeves puffed, and pink breeches buckled around his thighs with lime-green leather. His belt had three tails, which fanned out like chocobo feathers, hanging to his ankles. A roguish grin lit up his white-bearded face, which was not unhandsome, when he offered his manse for their particular use.

Their errand in the capital had failed the moment Cid boarded the atomos with the shards. Once more aimless, Ashe accepted Reddas's hospitality for all of them.


	53. Overlooking Eternity

Not so long ago, they had been guests in another estate. But where Marquis Ondore had held them prisoners of his lies in Bhujerba, the sky pirate Reddas afforded them true hospitality in the bustling port of Balfonheim. Daina slept for almost a full day in a wonderfully fluffy bed and awoke to the salty sea breeze blowing in through open windows.

She moved to the windows to take in the city view. Here in the southeast of Archadia, the weather was mild, and the people full of purpose. Shouts from the docks reached her even here, in Reddas's manse, secluded behind its high, wrought-iron gates. Ships of both sea and air called this place home, and there was an atmosphere of harmony throughout.

Ashe was not in the room with her. Unconcerned with her Lady's safety in this free city, as Reddas had sworn to see to her every need, Daina showered and dressed, buckling her katana and ninja sword to her hip. She combed and braided her lengthening hair.

How long had it been since this journey began? How much longer would she be an outcast, dodging Vayne Solidor's greedy hand?

Watching her reflection in the mirror as if spying on someone else, she turned the dove barrette over in her fingers. It shone in the light, pearlescent, and then she clipped it into her hair and left the room.

A servant found her not long after, where she browsed through a rather whimsical gallery full of artwork from around Ivalice, displayed in no particular order, and informed her that his master requested her attendance in the billiard room in one hour. She graciously sent him off with her acquiescence, turned around, and came face to face with Basch.

If Daina's cheeks colored, his suffered no change; he'd had the advantage of coming in at the far end of the gallery.

He stopped about six feet away, and Daina's blush deepened as she remembered the last angry words spoken between them. Taking a breath, she closed the distance to something a little more civil, and looked up at him. He returned her look, as steady and unflinching a stare as he'd ever given her, and, for some reason, she felt unbearably sad. Her mouth moved on its own, laying out her apology in a soft, small voice. It couldn't have been very intelligible, but he seemed to understand.

"May I request your company in a walk?" he asked.

Not trusting herself to speak any more, she nodded. Their equipped swords made a slight distance between them a necessity, one that was so natural she was not upset by it.

"I also owe you an apology," he said. "Considering my behavior, your reproofs are not entirely a mystery to me."

"I do not stand here expecting an apology," she said.

"An explanation, then?" The ghost of a smile touched his mouth.

She returned it. "Perhaps."

"Aye. Awkward though it may be, it is your due." He closed his eyes. "The name my brother uses, Gabranth – it was our mother's maiden name."

Daina blinked. Whatever confession she'd been expecting, it hadn't started there, but she did not interrupt.

As she already knew, he was a good storyteller. He laid his history before her with feeling, of growing up in the republic of Landis with his twin brother, as rough and untamed as two boys can be, of caring wholeheartedly for their sickly mother in a father's absence. However, at fourteen years of age, he saw one life end and another begin, when Archadia moved against Landis. Unable to bear the thought of living under Imperial rule but equally unable to convince his brother to move their dying mother, Basch fled to Rabanastre alone with the idea of restoring Landis as a Dalmascan soldier.

"My aid came too late," he said heavily. "Landis fell completely. I believed Noah and our mother lost. For many years, I heard nothing of them. I was not there for them when they needed me. My tethers cut, I dedicated myself to Dalmasca."

"What happened to them?"

"Noah proved himself able to bear shame, as I have. He sought aid from Archadia instead, and embraced our enemy in order to take our mother back to her homeland, where she died of her illness and grief. All of this, I learned when the judge magister who tried and sentenced me for a murder I did not commit wore my face. When my brother's own sword marked me." His eyebrows lowered, puckering the scar. "Had I but known they lived . . .

"Until I lay this past to rest, and see my brother restored, I cannot falter," he said in a stronger voice, and he looked at her again. He brushed the dove with his fingertips, tucked her hair behind her ear. "I did not foresee someone as lovely – as _alive_ as you entering my life. You are what I have striven to be. Your homeland is lost, yet you are untarnished by it, unfettered by guilt, and capable of moving forward with such strength. Your mind is informed, your heart affectionate, and your judgment sound. And you are so young."

Daina indignantly opened her mouth, but he forestalled her with a rueful laugh.

"Would that your youth was all I had to contend with," he said. His hand dropped. "If that were all, I would treat it with the contempt it deserves. Lady, I would have given chase before you ever gave me reason to hope."

There it was. He _did_ love her, or was close to it. Yet, she wasn't so lost in the rush of emotions this engendered to miss his meaning.

"I cannot give you what you ask of me," he said. "I gave my life to Her Highness, and Noah is waiting for me. Between them, there is nothing left."

"I don't agree with you," she said in a voice infuriatingly thick with tears. Hadn't she proven she didn't need anything from him – that she was a knight and a protector – that her love had withstood two terrible trials already?

"No," he said in his rough, low voice, "I do not expect that you would. But that is my explanation, however inadequate it may be. I _will_ see this through. I am truly grieved – I am – sorry –"

By then, Daina was crying so bitterly that it was foolish for either of them to linger, and they parted.


	54. Staging Shaft

Reddas seemed to disdain amenities such as chairs and glasses. Beer in green bottles was offered when he and his guests filed into his room, where the billiard table had been converted into a war map complete with models of the opposing fleets, and Reddas himself lounged against his desk. Daina chose to sit on the floor by one of the stone pillars, for the whole room was open to the sky, its horizons filled with the blue sea. With her back to the light, she hoped, her tear streaked face might escape detection.

Ashe joined her, staring down into Balfonheim Port while the breeze teased her flaxen hair. "They choose to supply the Resistance, yet raise not a sword in aid. What city could do this?"

"A city of men without countries," Reddas said, unabashed. "Pirates of the sea and of the sky. Few are they who would fain lay down their lives for a friend, let alone a king."

She turned to him. "The marquis – he is set on war?"

"The time approaches when he must make his position vis-à-vis the Empire clear. When he helped you off the _Leviathan_, he spited the judges full sore. He cannot sit in idleness and expect to avoid a reckoning. The marquis shares my distaste for war, yet if it comes to it, he will show no quarter."

He went on to explain his part in the Resistance, and how Ondore had supported his infiltration of the capital in order to acquire the Dusk and Midlight Shards for the marquis, and finally Ondore's intention to side with Rozarria if the stones could not be had.

"It's just what Vayne wants," Basch said, crossing his arms. "Lure the Rozarrians and the Resistance to the field, then crush both with the nethicite."

"I think not," Balthier put in. "Cid has the stone. We smash it to pieces with the Sword of Kings. Vayne will be left holding nary a thing." His brown eyes roved over them all, and settled on the princess. "Time is short. We follow Cid. He's heading towards Giruvegan."

"Giruvegan," Ashe repeated in a half whisper.

Fran came forward, long legs encased in the latticework of her armor. "It is told of in a song of my people. 'On the farthest shores of the river of time, shrouded deep in the roiling Mist, the holy land sleeps: Giruvegan. Who knows the paths? The way to its doors?' "

"Then you seek the Jagd Difohr," Reddas said in answer. "Deep within the jungle of Golmore, in a corner of the Feywood, a Mist-storm surges and seethes."

"Then that's it," Vaan said excitedly. Daina wondered if his sheltered upbringing in Rabanastre was the cause behind his ignorance; the Feywood was a myth. "Let's go!"

"Right," Penelo agreed.

Vaan grabbed her hand and dragged her out of the room, and Basch and Fran immediately followed.

Balthier, however, stopped and turned back. "Not coming, Reddas? Forget your precious nethicite already?"

"Cid's words rang hollow to me," Reddas said slowly. "I will follow another course."

"Ah, another lead then, is it? You're well informed."

"I could well say the same to you, pirate."

The doors burst open and Vaan impatiently said, "Hurry it up, or we'll leave without you."

"Ah, Vaan!" Reddas grinned. "I've had some of my men check on this Feywood. Best ask what they've found."

"Okay! Thanks for the help, Reddas." Vaan disappeared.

Reddas burst out laughing. "Fly first, ask questions later. Your apprentice is more pirate than you."

"I don't have an apprentice," Balthier snapped. He left.

Daina and Ashe moved to go, also.

"Princess Ashe!" Reddas stood away from his desk, black eyebrows lowered. "I would hear your heart. If Dr. Cid has spoken the truth, you may well be rewarded with more nethicite in Giruvegan. Tell me: Do you still desire the stone?"

"I desire its power," Ashe said clearly. She twisted her ring, and lowered her voice, as if ashamed of her own heart. "I want, yet I also fear. I must protect Dalmasca. I can't afford to fear anything."

Reddas appeared to be mulling something over, but then he said, with a compassion that stabbed at Daina's very soul: "Do not forget Nabudis. That is my only counsel for you."

Ashe nodded, and then looked for Daina. Although a little shaken at the reminder of her lost home, Daina marked her approval with a nod, and the two women exited the manse for the courtyard on Saccio Lane.

Outside, Vaan spoke with Reddas's associates. Daina was a little baffled by Reddas's term _men_, for one of them was a rather voluptuous woman, and one a small nu mou with a parrot on his hat.

"No one had ever found this so-called Feywood, Vaan," Daina said, and the nu mou and his parrot both looked at her. "Or, at least, lived to tell of it," she amended.

"If that be true, where the stories be comin' from, eh?" the nu mou chuckled, only his wet black nose showing from beneath the brim of his tattered, floppy hat.

Exasperated, Daina turned away with a shake of her head. Balthier and Basch plotted their route to Golmore, and the unknown Feywood beyond, and Fran and Penelo listened. She kept walking, out of earshot, trusting to the others to hash out the plan.

Ashe turned to Daina and walked with her. "Something else troubles you."

Dismayed, Daina met her friend's eyes, went pink, and said nothing.

Faintly, Ashe smiled. "At times you may be quiet, but at others, your opinions are decidedly voluble. It is unlike you to be silent now." Her eyes dropped; she was still twiddling her ring. "Can you not confide in me? Do you trust me so little?"

"No! My Lady!" Daina collected herself and checked to make sure no one had heeded her outburst. "It has nothing to do with trust," she said in a calmer tone.

Ashe waited, her expression sympathetic.

"I should have spoken to you about this sooner, but you already have so much resting on you. I did not speak because I could not add myself to your problems." She stopped, searching for the right words. "I am confused. I feel as though I have betrayed you, My Lady. For some time now, I have been torn between my vows, and my feelings. I thought that I could indulge the latter without interfering with my duty to you."

"You still think that way," Ashe said wisely. When Daina nodded, she asked, "Basch?"

Another nod.

"The only betrayal would lie in deceiving yourself," Ashe murmured. A single tear slipped down her smooth cheek. "My marriage with Rasler was political, but it was so much more than that to he and I. Rasler did not believe in playing a part. I know, Daina, that you are not very different from him. You and Basch do not move in estranged circles, and my approval or disapproval centers on your happiness, or lack thereof."

She grasped Daina's hands earnestly. "Follow your happiness, and rest assured that I hold absolute faith in your honor to me."

"Hey! Let's go!" Vaan yelled.

Daina squeezed Ashe's hands in gratitude, and, with a stronger heart, went to join her friends.


	55. Secret Passage

The Feywood, in its dark, musty way, with snow and sparkling snowflies falling more softly than phoenix down, was beautiful.

Wild and untouched by the sentient races of modern-day Ivalice, the Feywood reeked of the ancients. Death held as much sway as life, a halfway place, high and frigid, and crystalline with Mist. Beasts that thrived in jagd attacked ferociously with fang, claw, or beak. Magicks more powerful than anything Fran could teach Penelo cast confusion over them, preventing them from distinguishing friend and foe; comrades fell asleep and dropped to the mulch in the middle of battles against tiny mus and deadly nightshades; blindness incapacitated them against stony golems and flaming cerberuses; their own magicks worked against them when employed on the feathered mirrorknights. Frozen lakes gleamed like polished glass, deceptively deep, and hoary trees kinked up their roots to trip them.

It was a topsy turvy place, a labyrinth of earth and undergrowth. As they moved deeper into it and the crunchy snow piled up deeper likewise, Daina squinted against the afterimages of Mist that showed her Ashe walking both ahead of her and to the side, or swallowed up Balthier completely, replacing him with a snarling tartarus. The kogarasumaru flashed out. She slew the hellish canine and moved on, bemused and enchanted by the Mist.

"What is that?"

She had no idea who had asked the question. It had been so long since anyone had spoken that for a moment Daina struggled to find words within herself. They seemed to have vanished along with her appetite, leaving only a vague dreaminess behind.

Ashe stepped forward, climbing the low steps to a small pentagonal temple or shrine. Its clean pillars and dome seemed untouched by time or weather. Her red boots scraped on stone as she turned in a slow circle, and then she studied the tiles beneath her feet. "Feywood glyph? 'Illusion betokens the true way,' " she read.

"What does _that_ mean?" Vaan asked, nonplussed.

"I do not know."

Daina climbed the steps also, watching her boots pass through the glyph as through water. Basch stepped up, and when she looked over at him, she saw beyond him, framed perfectly between two pillars, a forest scene as lush as the Salikawood, where snow never fell, but more primal, full of ferns, cycads, and palms. She gaped at the vision, but it did not fade, despite the expanse of glittering white snow on either side. Basch, catching her bewildered expression, turned around and chuckled.

"There," he said roughly. "That is our way."

So they went, stumbling across more shrines in the snow. When the behemoths and giant, winged preying mantises prevented their walking in a straight line, they had to backtrack, although the Mist hid their footprints from view. Eventually, after traveling in interminable circles, they reached a great gate. None could open it.

_I wonder now that_ any _stories of this place exist_, Daina thought to herself. _Once in, how does anyone get out_?

While staring in frustration and stupefaction at the immovable gate, Ashe gasped, reached into her pocket, and withdrew Belias's crystal, which was glowing like a coal. She dropped it with an expression of startled pain, and it sizzled on the ice. As if eager to please, the gigas stepped forth. Four arms forming fiery sigils, it commanded the gate to open, bowed, and returned to its enforced sleep.

Ashe and Balthier looked at each other, warm breath devoid of words, the knowledge of the esper's true worth freezing in the still air. If they had not gained Belias's servitude, might they all have died there in the endless snow?

* * *

Giruvegan. The ancient city stretched out before them, age-blackened and utterly still. Daina marveled at the blue crystal walkways, which the passing of their feet did not scuff, and the cushioning silence.

" 'On the farthest shores of the river of time," Ashe murmured, "shrouded deep in the roiling Mist.' "

"What is it, Fran?" Penelo asked, and Daina looked back.

Fran, who had a fist pressed to her chest, said with difficulty, "The Mist runs thick here."

"Like on the _Leviathan_?" Vaan queried nervously.

"Do not worry," Fran said, smiling. "I will behave myself. The Mist here is cooled." Her smile faded. "I sense something like the shadow here."

"Venat," Balthier translated. Briskly, he added, "It appears Cid has yet to arrive. We'll lie in wait for him here."

"So we're not going inside?" Penelo asked.

"Not unless you want to end up twisted. Like the old man." His quick eyes took in Ashe's posture, taut and unbreathing, as if she was listening with all her might, and he approached her. "Something there?"

Daina looked. She saw nothing, but Ashe started walking again, toward the city.

"What is it?" Penelo whispered.

"She can see him," Vaan said cryptically. "Let's follow her."

"What?" Daina belatedly ran after them. "Who?"

Vaan did not answer. Perplexed, she took her place behind and to the left of her Lady. Ashe had asked for confidence from Daina, but she apparently harbored some secrets of her own. The lady knight glanced at Vaan. Secrets that at least one other person shared. Daina decided that was good enough, and let the subject drop.

The builders of Giruvegan, who had died out so long ago that no one remembered anything about them, had left more than their city behind. A strange statue knelt near the way stone into the city, a swordsman of incredible bulk. At first, Daina assumed he'd been carved bent over his weapon, but as they got closer she realized it was that he lacked a head. Instead, two stunted, ragged wings grew from his shoulder blades. They studied the statue nervously.

Daina drew the kogarasumaru. Belias had seemed mere statuary, also. "My Lady, touch the way stone. I will stay behind, in case this –" she nodded at the headless statue – "decides to wake up and make trouble."

"We'll stay, too," Vaan said, and Penelo, although white-faced, nodded.

"I mislike this," Fran said, flicking her ponytail over her shoulder. She selected an arrow. "The sleeping heart stirs. Be ready."

Basch, however, made an alteration in their plans. "Daina, Penelo, go with Her Highness. Balthier –"

The sky pirate nodded and offered his arm to Ashe. "See you on the other side, Captain."

Daina wanted to intervene. Basch was sending the weaker women away. Sure, the statue was a man of disproportionate size, but her skills had seen her through to this point. Why doubt her now?

Then, she looked at the arrangement again. Basch, Fran, and Vaan to face the enemy in front of them, one whose strength was known, while Ashe, Balthier, and Penelo were headed into the unknown on the other side of the way stone. Daina gripped the kogarasumaru. She was needed to protect her Lady, and so she went without complaint.

The last glimpse she had of Basch was when the way stone activated, filling her body with light. The headless statue rose up, wings extended, sword in hand, and it charged the three waiting for it. Then the way stone's magicks whisked her away.


	56. The Fog Mutters

The way stone deposited them inside the city, right between two mythril golems.

The golems looked like miniature castles, complete with furnaces burning in their chests and battlements across their shoulders. A large foot, for lack of a better term, aimed for Penelo as it stomped downward, and with warning shouts, the four humes scattered. A magick storm ensued, at least on the part of the golems, but Ashe and Daina hacked at the stone legs of the beasts until they fell. Then, using Ashe's shield, Daina smothered the flames in their furnaces, and the angry light in their eyes died.

Panting, the two women looked at each other, and then, for no reason, started laughing.

"Well, it's good to see you two having a good time," Balthier commented, and then frowned when Penelo giggled, too.

"Look at this place," Daina gasped, holding her side.

Giruvegan defied the laws of physics. It was enclosed, like the spiraling interior of a seashell. A series of steps and ramps led up, down, and sideways, and as far as she could see, lamps and lights lined the walls like an eternity of stars.

"Should we wait, or should we go?" Penelo asked.

"We go," Ashe said. "The longer we stay in one place, the easier it will be for whatever now lives in this city to find us, and in greater numbers than we can handle."

So they went, traversing the water-steps, sorely missing their comrades as they battled through roving bands of behemoths, which clutched ensorcelled swords, clusters of aggressive vivians, flora that were members of the malboro family, and spiteful gargoyle barons, whose evil natures belied their beautiful, white-feathered wings. Despite these beasts, the city rang with emptiness.

* * *

"It can't stop here," Daina muttered. "There's nowhere else to go."

They needn't have worried about waiting. The water-steps were more deceiving than Daina had first thought. Although they never once turned around or retraced their steps, Balthier had bit off an oath when they arrived at the same way stone that had brought them to the interior of the city, or so he thought; Ashe had disagreed, for there was no trace of the mythril golems. While they stood around arguing about it, Vaan, Basch, and Fran appeared, ending all doubt.

"Daedalus is vanquished!" Vaan crowed before taking in their flushed, disgruntled faces.

Once again, they had traipsed down the steps, ramps, and platforms, sticking to the right hand railing at Penelo's innocent suggestion, because no one could come up with anything better. Now, they stood staring down into the black depths of the city. No more ramps. No more turns.

"Dead end," Basch murmured.

"Maybe not. See those down there?" Vaan peered over the edge, backed up, and then charged at the dropoff.

"Vaan!" several people yelled.

With a sound like a gunshot, brilliant green light flared, creating a walkway below the boy. Laughing in triumph, he came to a halt far out beyond the edge of the water-steps and spun around, his hair wild. Shaking their heads, the others followed him. With each footstep, the tiles of light chimed. It was eerie, and beautiful, and, in a way, frightening. They kept going, down, deep, getting ever closer to a brown shape hanging in the distance.

_It must be big enough to swallow Rabanastre whole_, Daina thought with wonder. It was a crystal, rough and rugged like a slaven warder's shell, with smaller crystals – each a glowing palace in itself – orbiting its crust.

"I can't shake the feeling we're somewhere we're not meant to be," Penelo said.

"Yeah, it's exciting," Vaan said.

"Exciting?"

Basch frowned. "You are not troubled by the unknown? Who can say what lies ahead? We may encounter the very creators of nethicite."

"Yeah, I don't know what we'll find," Vaan said seriously. He grinned. "I like it better that way."

Balthier shook his head. "You're sounding more like the sky pirate every day."

The green walkway led them to more water-steps, which in turn put them right in the path of a tyrant. The massive wyrm roared in displeasure, but it stood no chance against the seven fighters. Daina paused a moment to mourn the necessity of kill or be killed when they knocked the creature off the platform and it fell, shrieking, into the black depths.

And then, to her amazement, Giruvegan's ephemeral street led them inside the massive crystal, where the green walks of light continued, conducting them ever deeper.

Daina lost all track of time inside the crystal, only aware of its passage when she grew hungry, thirsty, or weary. They relied on ethers to keep their bodies moving, for no one wanted to stop in this alien place, even to sleep. Several times, they ran up against the green light, which formed a vertical barrier and kept them from continuing. She grew thoroughly disheartened at their constant backtracking to seek the gate stones to remove the barriers. She viciously attacked any beast or undead being that came near, just for something to do.

"I've never seen this much Mist," Penelo breathed. It was dark and light at the same time, and cool against their skin, like water or silk. She touched Fran's arm. "Are you all right?"

Fran smiled. "I am fine. Thank you."

"Is that nethicite?" Ashe approached a node in the crystal's wall, which glowed like flame under glass. It was roughly the size of an emeralditan.

"I wonder." Fran crossed her arms, her good humor gone.

Ashe wasn't listening. "With that much nethicite in one's grasp –"

"You could destroy all of Ivalice," Fran finished coyly. "If you wished it."

Ashe frowned at her, and then turned her glare on the nethicite node. Making up her mind, she strode toward it, hand outstretched.

Instantly, the nethicite transported them wholesale into a new area.

"What happened?" Daina asked, looking around. She expected more of the same, a womb of crystal, chimes underfoot, but instead they walked through a red-hued prison, dark, menacing, and constructed of interlocking stone that was laid out in geometric patterns. She heard something else, too, like a whisper next to her ear.

"Curse the Light," it said.

She whipped around, but there was no one there. "Did you say something?" she asked Penelo.

Eyes wide, Penelo shook her head.

"I wielded utter control over the souls that wander the underworld," the voice whispered. "It was I who advised Ultima of the gods' hidden weaknesses. It was I who descended to the land to teach humes of destruction and evil."

Everyone was on alert now, casting around for the speaker, but Daina, hands over hear ears, could not draw her sword. The whispering voice hurt, as if the loudest of shrill whistles.

"For this," the voice hissed, and she cried out in pain, "I was stricken down and _bound_!"


	57. The Muted Scarp

A creature that was both woman and equine. An archer of consummate skill, she pierced Fran and then Basch before anyone had a chance to bring their weapons to bear. Her white eyes fixed on Daina, her anger and the hatred borne of centuries of imprisonment burning there. The lower half of her red-skinned face was wrapped in a mask, which prevented her from speaking aloud. She nocked another arrow and aimed it at Daina.

The bodiless voice, like the tentacles of a malboro, wormed through Daina's skull, hissing and whispering maleficent words. Daina sobbed, pressing harder against her ears, trying to block it.

"Daina!" Vaan was there, shaking her shoulder. When she did not respond, he faced the esper and shouted, "Try that on me!"

Malevolent laughter reverberated around the crystal chamber, and the esper's bowstring sang. Vaan, with both sword and shield, bunted the arrows aside, cutting them out of the air. The burning eyes narrowed, and the creature galloped around the room, forcing Vaan to give chase. Balthier loaded the betelgeuse, his hands steady despite Fran's unmoving form, and then fired point blank into the esper's face. Flailing, the creature fell back.

And Daina's mind was momentarily clear. The sharp, loud crack of the gun had shocked the voice into non-existence. Nauseated but determined, she struggled to draw the kogarasumaru. Vaan readied his sword, and Penelo gripped her dagger. Ashe, elegant and strong willed, also stood against the creature.

The esper recovered, stamping her hooves. She let loose another arrow, which struck Balthier in the arm; the betelgeuse jammed as it bounced off the floor. They would not be saved by its noise a second time.

"Silence," the voice droned. "There is only silence in death!"

"Shut _up_!" Daina screamed. The four teenagers attacked as one.

The esper's bow fell to the floor with a twang, its wood sundered. She retreated, kicking out with her hooves, plying black magicks over their heads that they grimly ignored.

"Her name!" Ashe shouted, her voice tiny and indistinct. "Listen for her name!"

"I can't hear anything!" Vaan bellowed back. In spite of the force he was obviously using, he sounded like a fly buzzing in a separate room.

Daina didn't care. She pressed her attack harder, thrusting the kogarasumaru into the creature's stomach. Instead of blood, light and shadow streamed out.

She had heard it. The Whisperer. "Shemhazai!"

A look of grudging respect from the blazing white eyes, and then Shemhazai succumbed to her enchanted sleep, and rewarded Daina with her crystal.

* * *

The ethers were gone.

No one mentioned it. There was nothing anyone could do about it.

The Whisperer's crystal buzzed in Daina's palm unpleasantly. It was like holding a particularly large, armored, grotesque sea creature. She put it in a pocket of her shorts while Penelo and Fran healed the wounded. Inside the crystal, their magicks were amazingly potent. They gathered themselves together and moved on.

Not far from Shemhazai's prison, they encountered another way stone. Ashe activated it with a touch, and it transported them with cold efficiency.

* * *

Sunlight pierced Daina's eyes. She winced against the glare. After so many hours – or was it days? – inside the great crystal, surrounded by hard edged facets of orange and yellow, the expanse of blue sky nearly stole her breath. The question was on her lips, but she swallowed it; it was useless to ask where they were. Somewhere mystical. Somewhere mortals weren't meant to be, perhaps, stranded on this lonely platform in a sky that showed no intention of ever meeting the ground. Six empty thrones guarded the outer edge of the platform.

"Where is everyone?" Ashe asked.

Startled, Daina went to her, but was repelled by a blanket of thickened air. Ashe's gray eyes were wide, frantic. She stared through them all as if she couldn't see them.

"My Lady?" Daina ventured. She prodded at the invisible barrier, but the princess walked further away, still searching. "My Lady!"

Vaan and Penelo also called to her. "Ashe?"

"Peace, she cannot hear," Basch said.

"But –" Daina started.

"Fear not, princess of Dalmasca," intoned a voice that had never passed through living vocal chords. It possessed a strange duality, neither male nor female. "We occuria have chosen you, and you alone."

Balthier and Fran exchanged looks.

What was going on? Daina pounded on the barrier. Each time her fists connected, a brilliant blue light flared. "Ashe!" she yelled.

"Ashelia B'nargin Dalmasca," the androgynous, bodiless voice said. "We see your heart desires power, and power most holy shall we grant. Seek you the Sun-Cryst, slumb' ring star. In tower on distant shore it dreams. The mother of all nethicite, the source of its unending power. The Dynast-King, his fallow shards, coarse trinkets cut from Sun-Cryst's light."

The speaker had Ashe's full attention. "Such power exists?"

"In times that are long passed away, we thought to save this Ivalice, and chose Raithwall the Dynast-King. He took the sword and cut the Cryst. Three shards he took from its gilt grasp. His words and deeds run through your veins."

Daina listened, still pressed up against the barrier, her eyes never leaving her Lady. It was disconcerting to watch Ashe speaking to no one, and to hear no one answer.

"That's why I was given it," Ashe breathed. "The Sword of Kings."

"The treaty held with kings of old is but a mem'ry, cold and still," the invisible being droned. "With you we now shall treat anew, to cut a run for hist'ry's flow."

In front of the princess, a second greatsword drew substance from the glowing blue light constantly bleeding from the barrier. It was silver and sapphire. Ashe gazed at it, her hands slack at her sides.

"Now take this sword, this Treaty-Blade. Occurian seal, mark of your worth. Cut deep the Cryst and seize your shards. Wield Dynast-King's power! Destroy Venat!"

Ashe was not the only one who gasped. "But Venat," she said, and then hesitated. "Venat is an occurian. A being like you."

"What did she say?" Balthier asked sharply.

"Venat is a heretic!"

The voice drowned out Balthier's question. A wind that tasted of fury, betrayal, jealousy, and hatred blasted forth. Ashe threw up her arms to shield her face.

"_Ashe_!" Daina screamed.

"The nethicite is ours to give, to chosen bearer or to none," the occurian seethed in a voice of gravel and metal filings, heedless of Daina's attempts to get past the barrier. "The heretic trespassed and set the rose of knowledge in Man's hand. With imitations they profane, it is anathema to us."

Daina's temper overflowed. The bodiless words were too much like Shemhazai's tricks, prying into the cracks of her skull. Heedless of all else, she drew the kogarasumaru and swung it at the barrier.


	58. Empyrean Ravel

As before when Reddas tried to attack a paling, the blue barrier flung Daina backward like a ball rebounding off the courts. The energy wrenched the kogarasumaru from her grasp, and she landed hard, skidding to the very edge of the platform.

Inside the barrier, the player poised on the heavenly stage took no notice of the farce beyond it.

"We give you now the stone and task," a second occurian voice said, ringing like iron bells. "Administer judgment: Destroy them all!"

"Judgment?" Ashe repeated.

Daina's head was aching. She struggled to sit up, accepted the hands that reached down to help her. Penelo hugged one of her arms in support. On the other side, she assumed, Vaan held her hand like a scared child. She hung on just as tightly.

"Destroy them all?" Ashe was saying. "The Empire?"

A third invisible occurian spoke. "The humes ever skew hist'ry's weave. With haste they move through too-short lives. Driven to err by base desires, t'ward waste and wasting on they run."

"Undying, we occuria light the path for wayward sons of Man," the first put in. "Oft did we pass judgment on them so that Ivalice might endure. Eternal, we are hist'ry's stewards, to set the course and keep it true. The chosen is our hand, our fist, to let live some and crush the rest. Princess, you have been chosen. Take revenge against those who stole your kingdom. Fulfill your role as savior."

Dreamily, Ashe reached for the sword, but at the last second, hesitated.

"Attain to your birthright!" the occurian shouted.

Ashe's eyebrows lowered. She grabbed the Treaty-Blade.

Everything went white.

When Daina's vision returned, they were still on the platform. Holding the greatsword, Ashe was staring pensively out at the deep purple sky. A great pressure seemed to have lifted, and Daina knew that the invisible occuria had departed.

"Ashe!" Vaan exclaimed, and the princess turned. He ran forward. "What's with these occuria? What gives them the right to tell you what to do?"

"Will you take revenge, as they ask?" Fran wanted to know.

Daina wanted to know something else. If Vaan was over there, then who –?

Basch let her go once her terrified grip slackened, and then he looked at the princess, whose face bespoke her shock. "We could not see them, but we heard the occuria speak," he told her. "They may be gods, but we are the arbiters of our destiny. Your Highness, I am against this. The Empire must pay, but destruction?"

"Um, does anyone know what happened to Dr. Cid?" Penelo asked. "Wasn't he saying he'd be here?"

Basch frowned. "He should've arrived by now."

"And I should've realized by now." Balthier's handsome face was furious. "He's not coming. He laid out the bait, and we bit. Remember what he said? He wanted Ashe to get the stone. He wanted that all along. That's why he flaunted his nethicite, and reeled us in with stories about Giruvegan. All to bring Ashe to the occuria."

Penelo's pretty features were pinched in concentration. "But wait – if we got a hold of the nethicite, wouldn't that be bad for the Empire?"

"Maybe he wants to see what happens when foes with nethicite collide? That'd be just like _Dr._ Cid."

Everyone stopped talking and looked at Ashe. She studied the ridiculously large gems set in the Treaty-Blade's hilt.

"I will search out the Sun-Cryst," she said.

That was that, then. Daina had neither the inclination nor the energy to discuss it any longer, and when Basch turned to go, she followed him, her hand still cupped around the remembrance of the warmth of his.

Getting out of Giruvegan proved no easier than getting in, but at the final way stone, Basch said to Fran, " 'In tower on distant shore dreams the Sun-Cryst.' Do these words mean aught to you?"

The beautiful viera shook her head.

"Didn't Reddas say he was going to follow some other course?" Vaan piped up. "Maybe he found out something that can help."

"I'd rather stay out of that sky pirate's debt, thank you," Balthier said.

"What's wrong with Reddas? If you can't trust your own kind, who can you trust?"

"You're an expert on pirating now, are you?"

Before Vaan could retort, the way stone activated, whisking them away.

* * *

They returned to Balfonheim Port to seek Reddas. Daina heard the big man long before they reached his billiard room.

"Ships in the water!" he roared. "Send fishing dories if need be, I care not. Glossair engines are as good to us as sky to a fish. Leave what boats have foundered. I want souls saved, not driftwood!"

As if precipitated by his volume, three pirates bounded out of the room, each throwing curious glances over their shoulders at Ashe and the others before they scurried down the central stairs.

Reddas looked up as Ashe entered, closely followed by her warband, and his fierce expression softened somewhat.

"Our armada ran afoul of bad water near the Ridorana Cataract," he explained without preamble. "All engines stopped asudden, becalmed. Trouble with a Mist thick as death, it seems." He ran a hand over his pate. "Those seas are jagd. I expected airship trouble, not a fleet foundering midst the waves."

He threw himself into his chair and propped his huge feet on his desk. "Tell me of what happened in Giruvegan. From the lay of your eyes, I measure all did not go well. Cid – was he false as I feared?"

"Yes," Ashe said. "But we may have caught a glimpse of his true intent. We may now know what it is that Cid searches for."

While Ashe told Reddas of what they had learned, some of the manse's staff brought a meal for his guests. Daina, although exhausted, joined the others in eating the first solid food they'd had since reaching the Feywood. Ethers were all well and good, but she'd lost too much muscle weight on the journey. Had they wandered there any longer, she would have wasted away, become a corpse animated by the Mist's illusory life.

Reddas took a long pull of his beer. "So the deifacted nethicite was only a fragment? And these occuria – I know not, and care to know even less."

"If we strike this Sun-Cryst with the Sword of Kings, no new stone may be born," Fran said, summing it up. "We say the Sun-Cryst is the source of all nethicite's power. If we might break it, the Dusk Shard would be as a thing lifeless. As for the manufacted nethicite, who can say?"

"There is another way," Balthier added. "Use the Treaty-Blade to cut a new stone to fight the Dusk Shard and the manufacted stones."

Reddas peered at him. "Would you like to know the best use of nethicite? Will or nil, I'll tell you. You pick it up, and throw it away."


	59. Mirror of the Soul

An uncomfortable silence followed this assertion. Ashe, still clutching the Treaty-Blade, sat down next to Daina.

"Either way, we gotta find this Sun-Cryst first, right?" Vaan asked reasonably. "Don't we? Across the sea, in a tower on distant shore . . . Reddas?"

"Familiar words, Vaan. I saw something of the sort in some documents I chanced upon during my visit to Draklor. The Naldoan Sea, the Ridorana Cataract, and the Pharos Lighthouse." Reddas heaved a sigh. "I sent my fleet to fish out the truth behind these words, and caught trouble."

"Then proof is ours," Basch said, looking around at them all. "This lighthouse on the Naldoan Sea is the tower on the distant shore. The Mist that becalmed your ships is a grim, yet clear sign. The Sun-Cryst is there."

"All well and good, but how do we get there? Those seas are in jagd, as I recall," Balthier pointed out.

Reddas opened one of his desk drawers and produced what looked like a large carnelian. He turned it in the light, palmed it, and said, "Try putting this one in your ship. 'Tis a skystone made to resist jagd."

He tossed it to Balthier.

"More spoils from the Draklor Labs, is it?" Balthier examined it suspiciously. "Why not use it yourself?"

"That's just the thing," Reddas said. "My ship's a Bhujerban model – it will not work. But should it fit the _Strahl_, she'll fly in jagd. Lady Ashe," he said, abruptly turning to her. "I would accompany Your Highness, if you do not object."

"I am in your care," the princess answered graciously. "But, tell me one thing: Why do so much for us?"

Reddas's dark face was hard. "The Nabreus Deadlands."

At that, Daina's head shot up. "Nabudis . . . was your home?"

"Nay," he said gently, "but a memory forever burned in my heart."

* * *

Spirits low, Daina retired early to her room. She curled up on a padded bench below the wall of windows to watch the passing of clouds. She sang softly to herself, unaware of Shemhazai's crystal in her pocket, and how it glowed.

* * *

They arrived, as expected, with twilight.

"Sir Praeities!"

Bertrand Praeities turned to meet the runner, the last rays of the sun glancing off the boy's armor and his own.

The runner came to a breathless halt and then knelt before his Commander. "We have engaged in the Salikawood, Sir. The line is holding steady."

"Good lad," Bertrand approved. "What other news?"

"The Imperial fleet is hanging at the edge of the city. So far, the ships have not acted."

The knight looked toward the palace. A faint shimmer from the highest tower denoted the magi at work inside. "No, nor will they while the paling is active. Our priority, then," he went on, raising his voice so the troops standing in regiments behind him could hear, "is to keep that paling active. We have a long night ahead of us, but if all goes well, we can go home by dawn's light. Archadia may set foot in our city, but they are mere visitors, who need to understand that we do not welcome them!"

The soldiers shouted their agreement as one, and Bertrand clapped the runner on the shoulder before he sent the boy on his way.

He was uneasy. Despite his assurance that the Imperial ships could do no damage to the palace and a large part of Nabudis while the paling was active, and despite that he and his men were guarding the city's outer wall, something felt wrong.

It was the civil war currently raging in Nabradia. Someone had provoked the Rozarrian supporters, giving Archadia a reason to intervene under the name of the Galtea Suppression Army. Three days running, Nabudis had been under siege.

For two hours, Bertrand waited. The air grew cool and misty, the city hushed beneath its rooftops. Even though it had only been a few weeks since the royal wedding, Daina's absence was felt by both he and his wife, Lizzy. It hurt him now, to be here, while Lizzy was home alone; although, he chuckled to himself, he would not have been able to keep Daina home with her mother while Nabudis was under threat anyway.

What were they doing now? Bertrand consoled himself with thoughts of his family: His beautiful wife, sleepless on this night as she told him she always was when he was on duty, perhaps sitting by the big picture window in the drawing room with a book, unheeded, in her lap; his beautiful daughter, proud and fierce, probably turning heads and setting tongues on the wag in Rabanastre with her Nabradian ways. Sending Daina to Dalmasca was the best thing he could have done for her. With an aging king at home and the union of the two young rulers abroad, he knew that to leave her here in Nabudis would doom her to insignificance.

The fighting, when it reached them, was desperate. Under a moonless sky, the two armies struggled and heaved like ocean waves around rock. The Archadian soldiers proceeded no farther than the palisades. Cheering, Bertrand and his men began pressing the invaders back toward the Salikawood.

Then, like a mouse stealing along the baseboards for its hole, the night grew light. At first, Bertrand assumed dawn had finally come.

But the light, orange like flame, was coming from the north.

A hush descended over the two armies. All eyes turned north, swords, crossbows, bows, and guns stilled – the fight, forgotten.

He could see the Imperial fleet now. The ships were retreating, black bulks against the dark sky. Like a wayward star, the light drifted over the palace, and then it imploded. The paling, in blue and orange tongues of electricity, was sucked into the implosion. From far below, deep in the palace itself, another light burst free to meet it. A tidal wave of hungry Mist blasted through the streets of Nabudis. In a flash, trees withered. Buildings collapsed.

By the time the sound of the secondary explosion reached the outer wall, Bertrand and his men were dead, their corpses unrecognizable.

Morning illuminated a city of destruction. Bloated bodies of fish littered the shores of the evaporated lake. Amid the rubble, moaning, gurgling noises arose, replacing the soft coos of the white doves.

* * *

A knock, so simple in its normalcy, woke Daina with a start. She'd fallen asleep at the window, her cheek imprinted with the plates of her glove. It was late afternoon in Balfonheim Port, hot and balmy.

The shades of Nabudis hung in her eyes, dimming the sunlight.

She burst into tears.


	60. Succor Midst Sorrow

Daina tried to stand, but her legs would not support her and instead dumped her unceremoniously on the floor in an avalanche of throw pillows.

Something sharp stabbed her in the hip.

She frantically dug the offending object out of her pocket: A crystal red as a rose, crawling all over with Mist. The stone whispered at her. The shadows gained in strength.

"I told you to shut up!" Daina hurled the crystal as far from her as she could and heard it smash something in the back room. "How could you show me that? You're supposed to be _asleep_! You're _horrible_!"

The door banged open. She had forgotten that someone had knocked, which was what had awakened her in the first place.

Silence oozed out of the back room. It mocked her.

_Horrible_. Daina scrubbed her fists into her eyes. Composing her expression, she turned to face her visitor.

It was Basch. A slightly hysterical giggle bubbled out, followed closely by the last of her tears. "Hello. Why are you here?"

"I heard shouting," he said roughly. "Are you all right?"

"No. Yes." She took a deep breath, casting a glance at the back room. "It was just a – bad dream. Thought you'd come and rescue me?" She said it lightly, endeavoring to shake off the remnants of Shemhazai's whispers.

"I would not presume," he answered in the same tone, but then his not-quite-a-smile made an appearance and he said more seriously, "I have learned that you are perfectly capable of taking care of yourself."

"I think – I broke something just now," she said in some confusion, and gestured at the back room. "If you'll excuse me –"

"Of course." He bowed and moved for the door.

"No!" she cried.

He stopped, obviously surprised, and she sighed.

"It can wait. Please, tell me why you really came."

"In two days, the _Strahl_ will be ready for launch. Vaan, Penelo, and Her Highness have a trip to the market planned for the morning, if you would care to join us."

"I see," she murmured. The shadows had gone, leaving only the hot sunlight behind. With every second that passed, she was feeling better, more like herself. She picked up the kogarasumaru, which was hanging from its belt over the back of a chair, and tried to draw it. It stuck halfway out, and then came free with a jerk. She held it up, inspecting the warp in the blade, which had happened on the occuria's platform. "Yes, I would like that. Thank you."

"Then –" Again, he turned to go, grasping the doorknob.

"Basch." She set the katana aside and walked up to him. Wrapped her fingers in the back of his red vest. Laid her forehead between his shoulder blades. "Stay."

For long moments, neither moved except to breathe, but then she slipped between him and the door, barring the exit. If she had to watch him walk away from her again, she would die.

"I should go," he said in his low, rough voice.

She shivered. "Why?"

"I cannot stay, Daina. Your love is a battle that I cannot win."

She brazenly reached into his space, snaking her arms around the back of his neck. "You can't win every time."

"Impossible girl!" He detached her arms and pushed her away, pinning her to the closed door. "I have already explained –"

"Tell me you don't love me," she said, head high, ignoring his bruising grip on her wrists. "Tell me that, and I'll concede. Until you do, I will never give up."

Both were breathing heavily. She waited. The grip on her wrists loosened, became an embrace. His amber eyes darkened in defeat, and she knew she had finally won. He kissed her with the same fire that had turned her world upside down so long ago in the Zertinan Caverns. Her awareness retracted, concentrated on the flame of his lips on hers. A thrill of delight ran through her when he pulled her closer. In spite of their various buckles and armor, she pressed herself against him, reveling in the feel of his skin on hers. Her fingers wove into his hair, traced the scar in his left earlobe, and he undid the top buckle of her coat. Sliding the collar out of the way, he kissed her mouth, then her jaw, and her throat.

"I love you," he whispered against her skin.

"Then stay," she whispered back.

The kisses resumed, slow and gentle. Basch's callused hands ran over Daina's belly, exploring the curve of waist and hip, before working at the buckles of her coat, which kept it belted below her breasts.

She shrugged it off, and it pooled around her feet. Then, she stepped out of it, heading for the back room. She looked over her shoulder, held out her hand invitingly.

He took it, and she led him forward.

* * *

Once before, Daina had watched Basch sleep.

He was on his side, his arm folded beneath his cheek, his unruly hair a spray of wheat on the damask pillowcase. She smiled to herself. With such a wealth of gold in her bed, no one could blame her for touching. The tanned skin of his chest and stomach was smooth and hard with muscle; since his release from the oubliette, he'd grown into himself, no longer the thin shadow of a man she'd first met. The phoenix pendant was twisted, the chain tight against his throat. She gently straightened it out, running her thumb over its stylized wings.

She looked up from her inspection to find him watching her. So still, so quiet, she hadn't realized he was awake, but he propped himself on an elbow and kissed her.

It felt so good, so peaceful, but there was something she had to say. His unhappiness, lurking just under the surface, was transparent to Daina.

"Do you love me?"

"Yes."

"Do you love Noah?"

His eyes searched her face. "Yes. He is my brother."

"Basch." She brushed her fingertips along his bearded chin. "Part of what it means to love is that it isn't mutually exclusive. Let me in. Together, we can see this through."

He pulled her to the sheets, burying his face in her hair. She could feel him trembling.

All she could do was hold him.


	61. They Who Thirst Not

The shopkeeper, Beruny, dug his tape measure out of an overflowing junk drawer. "I'm afraid your katana won't be repaired in time for your departure. However, I can offer you a discount on any sword in the store."

Daina sighed. She liked the kogarasumaru. "Thank you."

Elza, one of Reddas's men, had escorted them to the marketplace. She crossed her arms over her ample bosom, her red lips fixed in a pout. "Ridorana . . ." she murmured.

"Something ails you?" Basch asked her. Every so often, he would look at Daina, and such a look it was that she found it beyond difficult to hold still while Beruny took her measurements.

"The great Pharos and the bottomless Cataract," Elza said in a stronger tone, tossing her riotous yellow hair over her red velvet shoulder. She frowned. "No man of Balfonheim would willingly go there, so oft are we warned as children. But Reddas is no man of Balfonheim. There were many against this expedition, but he . . . he knew no fear."

Beruny kept his eyes fixed on his tape measure, as if uncomfortable with Elza's chosen subject. Their gloom mirrored the rain pattering against the cobblestones beyond the shop door. A storm had moved in over Cerobi Steppe. The migrating elementals, Elza's partner Rikken had said matter-of-factly, were to blame for the change in weather.

"We cannot afford to capitulate to fear," Ashe said, so pensively that not even the fiery Elza came up with a retort.

While Vaan and Penelo discussed the differing magickal properties of the measures and scales in the display case, Daina tested three katanas. She chose the yakei, favoring its clean lines and wyrmhide grip over the ame-no-murakumo with its added wind effect or the kiku-ichimonji, which was slightly too large for her. Once again, the green tassel relocated to her new sword's hilt, and when she buckled the yakei around her hips and felt its balanced weight, she smiled, reminded of the lost kotetsu. Their troubles in the Garamsythe Waterway seemed but a candle to the sun compared to everything they had gone through since then.

The others stepped out into the rain while Daina was paying for the yakei. Beruny seemed glad to see the back of them, as if their very presence would bring disaster down on him, simply because they were not of Balfonheim and were planning to break into the taboo tower at Ridorana.

When she turned to go, 12500g lighter but happier for it, a hand closed around hers, and she smiled, looking up at Basch. "I had no idea people living in a free town could be so superstitious," she said in an undertone.

"Why not?" Ever courteous, Basch stepped aside for an entering customer, and Daina briefly laid her head on his shoulder, picking up the subtle hint of his shaving soap. "Sailors push the boundaries of the world, and often die for it. We know the Sun-Cryst is in the Pharos Lighthouse. How can sailors – nay, even pirates – hope to contend with that much Mist?"

"But then there are people like Vaan," she said, and he laughed. "He has no fear."

"It is because he is not alone," Basch said quietly.

Outside, Ashe was a blurry shape in the downpour, her arms over her head as she ran. She wasn't the only one. The entire Gallerina Marketplace was emptying as hume, seeq, and bangaa bolted for cover. Within seconds, they were stranded in the veil of gray.

"We're going to the Whitecap!" Vaan yelled. "Hurry it up or you're gonna get soaked!"

Daina, who didn't like the water driving in her face, would have run after them, but Basch, as reckless as someone much younger, grabbed her and kissed her. Well, then. She immediately threw every other care to the wind. She was so happy she thought she might fly to pieces, and she clung to him, demanding more. Basch grinned, seeming pleased with himself. Then, still grinning, he towed her along the wharf. When they reached the steamy haven of the pub, he let her go, his amber eyes afire.

She tried to catch her breath as he shook the water out of his hair. Unless they wanted to give the bar maid a thrill, she grudgingly mused, it was better to keep a respectable distance. Dripping and holding in laughter borne of sheer giddiness, she joined her friends at their table.

"What's with you?" Vaan wanted to know.

Penelo took one look at Daina, went pink in the cheeks, and put up her menu to hide her face, but Daina could see her shoulders shaking. Daina busied herself with squeezing the rain out of her braid.

"Penelo?" Vaan tried to take her menu. "Are you okay?"

"I'm hungry," Daina announced. "Elza, what's good here?"

* * *

Across the endlessly blue, choppy sea. The farther they flew, the more agitated the sea became, until it reached what looked like the end of the world, with nothing but empty space for miles beyond. Even above the hum of the glossair engines, Daina could hear the rush and roar of the sea plunging over the truncated seabed like spilled wine off a table. Great plumes of mist sparkled in the sun, silver and gold. Rainbows frolicked in the ever-changing waterfalls like jeweled birds. She, Vaan, and Penelo wedged themselves into one seat, all three gaping through the portal in awe.

The Lighthouse perched on the very lip of rock and water, in defiance of gravity. The sea flowed through its foundations, and the Pharos spat its own waterfalls over the Cataract's edge. It wasn't actually a single tower, but a collection of many, one built upon another. Spires of brown and gray stone rose proudly above the sea, jagged and forbidding. It was a fortress, the greatest one that ever stood.

Balthier landed the _Strahl_ in the ruins of a city that could only be seen from the air, about a mile from the Pharos itself. The constant noise of the ocean buzzed in Daina's ears when she debarked and waited for Fran to secure the _Strahl_'s anchor.

"A tower on distant shore," the viera said, straightening. It was like a mantra for them. Here, their journeys all came together. Fran directed her gaze upward to the shrouded bulk of the Lighthouse. "And about its peak, a piercing Mist."

"And in that Mist, the Sun-Cryst waits," Ashe said, clasping her hands.

"My Lady," Reddas rumbled. "Your words still sound of doubt. Pray you reach your answer, ere we the Sun-Cryst."

"And? Should I choose revenge, what then?"

Reddas began the climb toward the tower. "Then your woe shall be your own."

As a group, they followed the dark sky pirate, deep into the crumbling city.


	62. Ward of Measure

It was clear no one had set foot in the city in ages. In true pirate fashion, several members of their party looted precious artifacts from the ruins, but Daina accidentally triggered a series of invisible traps that almost killed her and Reddas, who was walking close by her. The sound of the explosions echoed through the city.

Lured by the noise, several deathclaws descended on them, keening in hunger. And that wasn't all – when Vaan, always in front, ascended the final steps to the Lighthouse, a salty breeze blew through the courtyard. It breathed up a small dust storm, and ran ravaging fingers over the decaying mound lying partway up the steps. Daina watched the beige swirls lift off the mound, and then she saw the glint of bone. Elongated phalanges, the remnants of wings, and the long, tooth-filled snout of the skull.

And then the mound moved.

"Whoa!" Vaan yelled, tripping backward down five stairs as the wyrm corpse snapped its jaws shut where his face had been.

The wyrm shuddered, and then its skeletal form reared upright. It roared with the sound of wind whistling through a cavern. Bone and tendons crackled like dry wood. Its eyes had long since decayed, but it inhaled mightily through a desiccated sinus cavity, sifted through the scents, and snarled at the boy.

"It's already dead!" Penelo exclaimed, backing away. "How can it be moving like that?"

"It's the Mist," Daina said, drawing the yakei. "This guardian probably doesn't know it has died."

The wyrm was still advancing, using its ruined wings and hind feet to slither after its prey. In desperation, Vaan kicked at the beast, and his shoe sank right through the toughened leather of its hide, embedded up to the ankle in its chest. Vaan shouted for help, desperately hacking at the wyrm with his lohengrin to free his foot.

The twang of a bowstring. A fiery arc. Fran's arrow found its mark and magickal flame greedily began consuming the wyrm's body. With an almighty wrench that ripped a rib through hide, Vaan scrambled away.

Totally disregarding the magicked arrow and the gaping hole in its torso, the wyrm stomped into their midst, hitting hard and fast. Fran dropped with a cry of pain. Ashe wasn't doing much better, but Balthier was there by her side, determinedly drawing the wyrm away from her. The lady knight rushed in. The wyrm's rock hard head slammed into her and punched her aside. She slid the full length of the courtyard before she could recover, wheezing.

"Look out!" Penelo screamed.

Her warning came too late. The wyrm unleashed a blast of Mist that felled Reddas, Ashe, Balthier, Fran, and Vaan in a single instant. They lay dazed, their faces twisted in terror.

"Lady Ashe! Ashe! Can you hear me?" Daina cried, running back toward her friends. The wyrm smelled her coming and attacked. She slashed and parried, but no matter how deeply the yakei cut, the wyrm did not seem to feel it. She couldn't kill this beast alone – it was too fast, too strong – but then Penelo danced in, her zwill crossblade flashing in her small hands. The two girls harried the monster, one on each side. They kept it busy, and Basch was able to break its neck while its attention was elsewhere.

The head flopped grotesquely sideways and dragged along the ground, the jaws working uselessly, while the body continued to rampage, albeit blindly, without coordination. After that, it was easy to slice the creature apart, and leave its remains where the wind could scour its bones clean.

Not sparing the creature a second thought, Daina dropped to her knees and cradled Lady Ashe in her lap. Ashe did not respond, her face frozen in a silent scream. "What's wrong with her?" she choked.

"Fearga, I think. Try a remedy," Penelo suggested shakily. "I don't have any spells that can help that."

Tenderly, they administered remedies to their friends, and, one by one, they regained their senses, the color returning to their faces.

Vaan looked dubiously up the steps, as if afraid to ascend them. This time, Ashe led the way. Still a little disoriented, she stumbled, but Balthier caught her hand and steadied her.

She did not immediately take her hand back.

Daina watched the shadows and sorrow of the past weigh them both down. Balthier handed her up the steps and then resumed his own climb, his eyes on the ground. Ashe's gaze lingered a little longer, but then she sighed and studied the door to the Pharos, a gold-hued creation large enough for an esper to pass through.

"Hey, Fran," Vaan called, when a plaque at the top of the stairs snagged his eye. "Something's written on the wall."

Fran joined him, her ears perked. "Engraved by someone, it seems," she said. "It's quite old. 'Lo, seeker in days unborn, god-blade bearer. Know you: This tower challenges the sky. Ware the Watcher; the ward of the Three waits, soul-hungry, unsated. He without power, want it not. He with power, trust it not. He with sight, heed it not. Rend illusion, cut the true path. In blood, Raithwall.' "

"The Dynast-King?" Ashe exclaimed.

Fran laughed. "Does it startle you? He took his sword from the occuria. It was here he claimed the nethicite. He must have known he was not the last the occuria would choose. He left this for _you_." She approached Ashe slowly. "Rend illusion, cut the true path. Words of much mystery. Yet his blood runs in your veins. Perhaps it whispers to you the truth?"

Ashe sighed again, and then, like a schoolgirl tackling an unwelcome assignment, she marched up to the door.

Hidden gears started up, rumbling and groaning, and a flash of blue light split the door. Then, like an enormous engine, the X-shaped plates of the door began to spin, revealing how deep the entrance actually ran; each plate was more than a foot thick. They turned, opening a portal like a black hole, until four flat notches in the plates formed a bridge at Ashe's feet. She stepped gracefully forward.

Inside the structure, all was blue. Blue-hued stone and brick, pale blue light. The sound of waterfalls was louder here, but when Daina saw the immense column of blue-white Mist and seawater swirling upward in the chamber's very center, she gasped.

Balthier and Basch picked their way across the floor. Like the city, the Pharos was a ruin.

"The Sun-Cryst should be at the top of the tower," Basch said.

"Yes, but it looks like someone's holding our lift on another floor," Balthier pointed out, examining a pair of waist-high gates that led directly into the Misty column.

"Then we find another way. Come," Reddas said, and he marched to the right, curving along with the column, until he found a door labeled "Threshold of Night."


	63. Paths of Chained Light

Reddas put his large hands against the door and pushed. Whatever Daina had expected, whether Raithwall's "Watcher" or perhaps a treasury full of fabulous riches, it was neither: The room was perhaps ten feet long and eight feet wide, and totally empty, like a vault long since cleaned out by thieves. Disappointed, she turned to go.

"Where is Vaan?" Penelo asked suddenly.

Startled, Daina scanned their group, and saw that Vaan was indeed missing, as was Fran. Although they searched every inch of The Wellspring, they could uncover no trace of their missing comrades. They found nothing except rubble and the upward-flowing swirl of Mist and water, and a single way stone device.

"What do we do?" Ashe murmured.

No one said anything.

Daina stepped up to the way stone. "We go on. Either we meet them along the way, or we don't. No matter what, My Lady, we must get you to the Sun-Cryst. Vaan and Fran know that."

"Of course, you're right." Ashe laid her hand on the device.

When they came out the other side of its magicks, they had ascended ten stories. The Pharos's interior flared wide here, flying buttresses bracing the crumbling stone staircases that led upward in a square-edged spiral around the Mist-water column. Here, above the tides of the sea, where the arched windows opened to nothing but sky, a strange set of beasts had made their home. Chimera brains, their fat cockatrice bodies topped by wicked, humanoid faces with pointed ears, rolled around the landings, while eerie blue-white mistmares patrolled the inner corridors. Flying aeronites harassed their party from above, although Penelo's thundaga spells frizzled them out of the air. Once, Balthier discovered a mimeo disguised as a treasure coffer, and the incident brought the mimic queen of Barheim Passage to mind. After that, no one had any taste for looting.

It was the brainpans, ugly, two-faced statues which strove to bite their legs off if they passed too near, that were the most interesting. Each time Daina or someone else slew one, its green flame expired, and a sound like a chime rang sweetly through the Pharos. At the bottom of the stairs that led from the tenth floor to the eleventh, they saw why: A gap had been filled by glowing green blocks.

Remembering Vaan's gamble inside Giruvegan, Daina strode boldly onto the blocks, which blazed once, and then solidified to ordinary stone beneath her boots. She tossed a crooked grin over her shoulder. This place wasn't so hard to understand, after all.

They repeated the process five more times, hunting out brainpans to complete green bridges on the fourteenth floor, the twenty-fifth, the thirty-first, the thirty-fifth, and the forty-seventh. By the time they reached the forty-ninth floor, the sea was a distant memory.

Reddas paused in front of an ancient door, on which an old, nearly indecipherable inscription warned of the second Watcher.

"Are you prepared, m'Lady?" he asked Ashe. "We may be separated."

"I am ready," she answered clearly.

Reddas pushed open the door.

For her part, Daina expected a repeat of the Threshold of Night, so she followed Reddas through the door as calmly as if she were entering another empty vault. Instead, she walked into a green marsh beneath a yellowish sky, heading for a white waterfall and a stagnant pool at its foot. Her surprise quickly changed to anger. "Abyssal celebrant!" she snarled. "Reddas, stop!"

"Ah, Praeities, you I expected," he said, sounding highly amused. "But _you_, I did not."

Daina turned around. There was Penelo, looking very small and half surprised, half rueful.

"I didn't want to be left behind," she said sheepishly.

"What do you mean, you expected me?" Daina demanded of the pirate.

"I have a theory," he said, grinning. "These Watchers are meant to protect the Sun-Cryst from all intruders, but the occuria have extended an invitation to their so-called chosen one."

"Ashe isn't here," said Penelo.

"Nay, and I will tell you why. Vaan is always at the helm, ready to fly down trouble's throat." Reddas held up a finger, and then a second. "The viera was also ready to fight. This place breathed evil to her, to my eye. Thus, they were taken at the first watch."

"I get it," Daina said slowly. "This time, you augured I, as well as yourself, would be taken, for my guard was up, and I had put myself before Ashe."

"That is the gist of it," he agreed.

"So what now?" Penelo cast a wary look around. "What is a Watcher, anyway?"

"Only one way to find out." Yakei in hand, Daina neared the pool.

Although the water's green surface was serene and unmarred by any ripple, a monster of a fish burst out of it. Its bloated body was mutated, it had a face like a crocodile, and it plied the humid air as if it were water. Yakei and fang clashed. Reddas, with a battle yell, came flying in like a reaper. The fish's scales, warped and thickened, repelled their blades. Despite its malformed shape, the fish was agile, and twisted and curled out of their reach.

Daina jumped back and cast one of her basic spells, and a small tongue of flame licked at the fish's fins. It recoiled, thrashing, although the spell had been too weak to do any real damage.

"Wait!" Penelo cried. "I have an idea! Keep it busy!"

Reddas had not needed encouragement. Like a berserker, he pounded on the beast, taking his own hits and likewise ignoring them.

It took three tries, but Penelo finally managed to cast a complex spell that coated the fish in oil. Then, with more magick skill than Daina could master, she sent repeated bursts of firaga at the monster. The oil combusted, and the fish, convulsing, died amidst the flames.

"You did it!" Daina crowed. The marsh dissolved around them, the air rippling like the pool's surface.

Penelo laughed, twirling gleefully on her toe, as the Watcher's magick deposited them elsewhere in the Pharos. "There's the lift," she said, and then gasped. "Vaan!"

"What took you so long?" he asked.


	64. Walk of Mind

"Where are we?" Daina asked Fran.

"The eighty-eighth floor," she answered, pointing to a small dial on the lift. According to the dial, there were one hundred floors in the tower. "We are close."

"It was a rocktoise," Vaan was telling Penelo, "and when we defeated it, we ended up here."

Reddas pounded his fist into the unresponsive lift. "Blast! We are stranded, and can neither move up nor down."

"It's best if we stay here," Daina said, angling the yakei so that she could sit cross-legged on the cold stone floor. "We have neither the Treaty-Blade nor the Sword of Kings, for Lady Ashe carries one and Captain Ronsenburg has the other. There is one more Watcher. They will face it, and be brought here, just like us."

Moreover, Basch and Balthier were still with the princess. Daina did not fear for her. Not with such companions at her side. She looked up at the dark-skinned sky pirate, who seemed as well bred as Balthier.

He was a friend, but was wrapped in a mystery they had yet to unravel. One thing in particular, what he had said of Nabudis, had bothered her on and off for several days. What did this big, violent, soft-hearted Archadian man know of her home's demise?

Hesitantly, she asked, "Reddas, what is Nabudis to you?"

He did not answer.

* * *

Ashe and the men arrived two hours later, just as Daina was about to start screaming to relieve the ennui. The princess's face was a mixture of surprise and battle lust, but she collected herself quickly. Her touch brought life to the lift. And to something else.

On the ninetieth floor, the lift juddered, lurched, and came to a stop. The maelstrom of Mist and seawater glowed dark gold, and then a creature with the torso of a man, the legs of a goat, and the face of a lion slammed onto the lift. Vaan rescued Penelo before she went overboard.

The creature grinned at them, red lips skinning back from pointed teeth. He had a long beard and mane of purest white, and wore a golden, horned helm. The esper roared, and quake magick rocked the platform.

Fran had a response to that: She and Penelo cast float spells, and a disc of thickened air lifted Daina's boots from the lift. It threw her balance completely off, and it felt like she was walking on water that constantly heaved under her feet, but the esper's quakeja spells gnashed harmlessly beneath her. They took him down quickly, because both of their mages worked in tandem to keep everyone at full health and strength, and the esper had to contend with six fighters at once.

It was Basch who gleaned the Bringer of Order's name. "Hashmal!"

The lion's face snarled, but Hashmal surrendered, sleep overtaking him as he vanished into his topaz crystal.

Basch looked at the crystal in his palm, holding silent communion with Hashmal much like Ashe with Belias, Vaan with Mateus, or Daina with Shemhazai. It was a strange feeling, becoming a summoner. He shook himself, putting the crystal away.

The float spells dissipated. Ashe touched the cracked dial. Nothing happened.

"It looks like we walk from here," Balthier said in disgust.

"I'll be happy if I never see another staircase again," Vaan said. Wearily, they began to climb.

* * *

"The din of the Mist grows greater," Fran suddenly said when they rounded the landing on the ninety-seventh floor.

"The Sun-Cryst must be near," Basch said.

Walking by his side, Daina looked up at him, but he was gazing at Ashe, who was leading them.

"I wonder if she'll really do it," Penelo murmured, coming up beside them. "Take revenge against the Empire. I mean, I know how she must feel. It's hard losing someone you care about."

"Something we all got in common," Vaan said with a sigh.

"But, you know, no matter how hard we try, we can't change the past. There's nothing that can bring them back."

Daina, listening to them and feeling the truth of the words in her heart, gently took Basch's hand. He finally looked at her, and returned the pressure of her fingers.

"Still, sometimes," Penelo went on, "when I close my eyes, I can see them so clearly."

"Illusions of the past," Reddas said gruffly. "You think to have cast them off, only to find them years later, unwearying, unrelenting. The past can bind a man as surely as irons."

Hand in hand, Daina and Basch watched the princess walk away from them, her shoulders tight, her head low. The Treaty-Blade, strapped to her back, dwarfed her slender body.

"Cut the true path," Reddas mused. "But will she?"

"She will do what she must," Daina said simply. "As we all must."

She started forward again, and Basch's fingers slipped from hers.

* * *

At the top of the Pharos, a brilliant white light with tendrils of blue and pink burned like a trapped star, turning the daytime sky to midnight blue. Ashe relieved Basch of the Sword of Kings, and its canvas wrap fluttered to the stone floor.

"So this is the Sun-Cryst," said Reddas.

Daina squinted against the glare through watery eyes, but she could not actually see the Cryst. Only the light, searing her retinas. It resembled a cobweb of thick strands, the Cryst an incandescent egg sac at its center.

Alone, Ashe paced toward the luminescent stone, an occurian greatsword in each hand. She lifted the Treaty-Blade. "King Raithwall stood here. With this sword he cut the Sun-Cryst, and took its power in his hand."

"But you're going to use the sword to destroy the Sun-Cryst," Vaan said, separating from their group to stand just behind her. "Aren't you, Ashe."

Ashe breathed a laugh. "Don't interrupt me, Vaan."

She lifted the Sword of Kings, and it lit up from within with the Mist's peculiar eldritch light. From outside the Pharos, a bolt of lightning struck the churning sea, and its instantaneous boom hurt Daina's ears. Howling wind whipped the waves one hundred stories below into froth, and about the Lighthouse's peak, ugly black clouds gathered. As if unaware of this phenomenon, Ashe took a deep breath and let it out in a sigh.

The Sun-Cryst's radiance died. Ashe was not the only one standing in front of it.

"_Lord Rasler_?" Basch choked.

Daina covered her mouth with her hands, but that did not stop the tears that welled up and spilled over. It _was_ Prince Rasler, or something ghostly that looked like him, wearing his armor, his face so terribly sad. The apparition had eyes only for Ashe.

"Why has he not moved on?" Daina whispered. "Has he been here . . . all along?" A more horrible afterlife, doomed to haunt his young widow, she could not imagine.


	65. Darkened Wharf

"You want revenge," Ashe said to her dead husband in disbelief. "You would have me use the stone?"

Rasler held out his hand, palm up. Daina did not hear him speak, but Ashe seemed to.

"You would have me destroy the Empire? Is this my duty? Is this what you want?" she yelled, but then her voice broke in anguish. "I cannot."

"Why do you hesitate?" The muffled, metallic voice nevertheless rang through the Pharos, and, startled, everyone turned around. From behind one of the broken walls, Judge Gabranth appeared, a sword in each hand. The raging wind snatched at his cape. "Take what is yours. The Cryst is a blade. It was meant for you. Wield it! Avenge your father!"

Ashe gasped. So did Daina.

"Yes," Gabranth said, advancing. "It was _I_ who wore Basch's face – who cut down the life of Dalmasca. Lady Ashe! Your father's murderer is here!"

"_You_?" Ashe snarled.

"And Reks!" Vaan snapped at the same time. He stepped protectively in front of Ashe, which was just as well. Basch had gone deathly still.

Swaggering, Gabranth put the pommels of his swords together, forming a double-bladed weapon. It was as if he was proud to boast of his sins, as if he enjoyed goading a woman who had lost everything, when he said, "I slew your king. I slew your country. Do these deeds not demand vengeance?"

Furious, Ashe dropped the decorative Sword of Kings, and brought the heftier Treaty-Blade to bear.

He laughed. "Yes. Good! Find your wrath! Take up your sword! Fight, and serve those who died before you!"

He ran at Vaan, swinging his weapon around to cut the boy in two, but Reddas and his swords got in the way. The dark sky pirate easily held the leaner Gabranth at bay.

"A judge magister there was," Reddas said conversationally, as if starting a bedtime story for children. "Two years past, he took the Midlight Shard and used it not knowing what he did, and Nabudis was blown away. Cid ordered this of him to learn the nethicite's true power. He swore such power would not be used again. He forsook his judicer's plate, and his name."

Reddas stepped back, brandishing his scythe-like swords.

"Judge Zecht!" said Gabranth. In realization. In greeting.

Daina was thunderstruck. Reddas, who was so kind to Lady Ashe, so good for the people of Balfonheim Port – _Reddas_ had killed her parents and destroyed her home? For nothing more than to satisfy a scientist's curiosity?

"It's been too long, Gabranth," Reddas said, sounding highly amused. Over his shoulder, he added, "Reach out your hand, Lady Ashe. But that which you must grasp is beyond revenge, something greater than despair. Something beyond _our_ reach. Try as we might, Gabranth, history's chains bind us too tightly."

He shook his bald head, and then attacked, except this time, the other judge was ready for him. Gabranth, who was as skilled as his brother, easily parried the pirate's blows and sent the larger man over backward. Reddas's swords skipped away.

"No, we cannot escape the past," Gabranth sneered. He pointed an accusing finger at Reddas. "This man is living proof! What is your past, Daughter of Dalmasca? Did you not swear revenge? Do the dead not demand it?"

Ashe bowed her head, and then turned beseeching eyes on Rasler's ghost. Vaan, however, picked up one of Reddas's dropped swords, his young face dark with hatred as he bared his teeth at Gabranth.

At the sound of blade scraping stone, Ashe looked at Vaan, and their eyes met. Daina, struggling with her own emotions, watched as the most extraordinary silent conversation took place. The fury bled out of each of them, street orphan and ex-princess, until they were simply two scared teenagers, Vaan and Ashe, adrift in the middle of a thunderstorm.

Rasler's shade silently stretched out his arms.

"Rasler," Ashe breathed, fixing her gaze on the floor. "My prince. Our time was short. Yet I know this: You were not the kind to take base revenge!"

With the last word, she swung the Treaty-Blade through the apparition. Rasler staggered back in shock, bleeding blue light.

"The Rasler I knew is gone," Ashe said bitterly.

Rasler opened his mouth, and then he spoke – and it was with the dual tones of an occurian. "You are our saint, Ashelia B'nargin. You must be the one to straighten hist' ry's weave!"

She didn't let him finish. She cut through him again, her elegant features screwed up in agony. "I am no false saint for you to use!" she shouted.

"Ashe," Vaan said softly.

Rasler's apparition dissipated and was no more. The tip of the Treaty-Blade struck the floor. Ashe's voice was soft. "In all Dalmasca's long history, not once did we rely on the Dusk Shard. Our people resolved never to use it, though their need might be dire. That was the Dalmasca I wanted back." The sword sagged further in her grip, and then she dropped it as if it were a piece of trash. Sadly, she said, "To use the stone now would be to betray that."

She turned around, every inch Dalmasca's ruler. "I will destroy the Sun-Cryst! I will discard the stone!"

"You claim no need of power?" Gabranth interrupted. "What of your broken kingdom's shame? The dead demand justice!"

"You're wrong," Vaan told him flatly.

Gabranth seemed to acknowledge Vaan for the first time; his helm jerked in the boy's direction.

"What would change?" Vaan asked. "I can't help my brother now. My brother's gone. He's dead!"

"There is no place in this future for those who have already passed," Daina murmured, but she wasn't sure to whom in the tower she was speaking. "They would not want it, and would curse us for trapping them in time."

"Even with power, we cannot change what has passed," Ashe said gently. She offered the blackened Dawn Shard to Gabranth, and then let it fall from her hand. More trash, to be thrown away. "What is done, is done."

The shard rolled to a stop at Gabranth's feet. Unmoving, he stared down at it in angry silence.


	66. Icebound Flow

Gabranth was not yet finished. After a moment, he seemed to gather his thoughts together for a new assault. Like Basch, he spoke well, and with conviction.

"Yet without power, what future can you claim?" he asked. "What a good a kingdom you cannot defend?"

"Then I will defend queen and kingdom both!" Basch said, stepping forward. He'd been silent for so long that Daina wondered if his brother had seen him. Behind him, the storm raged, and lightning flashed.

"Hah!" Gabranth cried after a stunned moment. He separated his weapons. "Defend? You? You who failed Landis and Dalmasca? What can shame hope to keep safe? Your shield is shattered! Your oaths poison those you would protect!"

At first, everyone stood back as the brothers engaged. They were evenly matched, Basch faster without the weight of Gabranth's armor, but also more vulnerable.

It was horrible.

"Hear me, Basch!" Gabranth yelled. "Do not think killing the kingslayer will win you back your honor! When you abandoned home and kin, your name was forever stained with blood!"

Basch's eyebrows lowered. He was mad. "Aye. This stain is mine to bear. But I will bear it willingly, knowing that I did all that I could, for hope!"

"Preen and strut as you like," Gabranth returned in a voice that was like, and not like, his brother's. "In the end, we are the same! Blood-thirsting carrion birds, hellbent on revenge!"

Gabranth had used the time taken for slinging insults to his advantage. He released his spell and the cyclone cuts sliced toward the unprepared Basch. He managed to block some of the attack, but not all, and it left his guard wide open.

Daina was already moving, and so was Vaan. They shot between the brothers, the yakei arcing up in a silver sweep. Daina braced her feet and flung Gabranth back. The yakei returned to guard before he recovered and he retreated, circling the teens warily.

"Are you all right?" Vaan asked.

"Aye," said Basch.

"Then finish it," Daina said, her eyes flicking from Gabranth to Basch. "It's not right to let this continue."

Gabranth, however, was not so obliging. Obviously infuriated by their interference, he went on the offensive, trading blows with them all. He meant to kill her, she knew. The only thing that saved her was her superior speed, both of foot and of blade, and the fact that Basch fought for her as much as for himself. Vaan's skill had improved greatly, as well. Between them, they forced Gabranth's defeat.

Panting, Gabranth caged himself in with his swords and his armor – he refused to surrender, and was preparing to resume the fight. "So you, too, would leave your debts unpaid?" he asked his twin sourly.

From behind Gabranth, Dr. Cid appeared and spryly jumped down from a window ledge. "Enough of this! I can bear no more!" he stated, sounding like a jaded critic at the theater. He strolled forward and picked up the discarded shard, turning it in his hand, examining it like a jeweler appraising a diamond. "You disappoint me, Gabranth. He trusted you."

Vaan exchanged a glance with Daina. Weren't the scientist and the judge allies? Daina did not relax her stance.

Insolently, Cid pushed one of Gabranth's sword arms down, and the wounded judge staggered, almost fell. Cid went on talking to the shard. "When you bared steel against the princess, you foreswore your obligations to your emperor! You shame yourself and make mockery of Lord Larsa's trust. You are unfit to serve him as sword or shield. And so I release you from that service. Your presence is neither required nor welcome."

Despite his full armor, the helm that hid his face from view, Daina could tell that Gabranth was incensed. He started to shake, his gloved hands tightening on his swords, and then he raised one and lunged forward with a snarl, aiming for Cid, to strike him down from behind.

"Gabranth!" Basch warned sharply.

Venat appeared where Cid had been, and Gabranth's blade swiped through the occurian's incorporeal form. Gabranth looked to his left, and there was Cid, grinning like a kid who had just won a game of Tag. Venat sent the judge flying backward. Gabranth crashed into a pillar and crumpled to the floor. There he slumped, unmoving.

Basch's breath caught, but he made no move to help his brother.

"You were only a tool of this Venat," Balthier said to his father.

"How quaint." Cid smirked, and the imposing white form of Venat crystallized at his shoulder. "We are allies! The occuria give men power as a master feeds his dog: It is meant to tame us. How well you've resisted their wile," he approved, redirecting his smirk to Ashe. "By turning your back on their stones, you give us free hand to write our own history."

"And at what price?" she parried. "Dalmasca's freedom for your nethicite? I shall not suffer you to have it. The Sun-Cryst be damned!"

Cid shifted space again. One moment, he was facing them, and the next, he had gotten between them and the Cryst. "Oh, be sure that it is!" he laughed. "For what other purpose do you think you've brought us here? But stay your occurian sword! The Sun-Cryst is glutted with Mist, too precious a thing to waste! Let us use the stone! Finish this, Venat!"

He hurled the pale blue Dawn Shard into the air, and Venat liquidly followed it. The shard glowed, calling to it the orange Dusk Shard and the indigo Midlight Shard. The three nethicite stones formed a triangle, and like a quickening chain, sucked great quantities of burning Mist between them. They combined, prismatic, and became a white-hot star, and a wave of power nearly pulled everyone flat. Daina lurched and landed on one knee, her braid whipping forward.

Cid burst into laughter. "Shards of nethicite! Cocoon of the Sun-Cryst! Spill forth your Mist upon this Ivalice! Let sea and sky be awash in it, that _Bahamut_ may come and drink his fill!"

As if his shouts were a spell, the shards rejoined with the Sun-Cryst, and so much Mist blew outward that everyone except Cid struggled to remain standing against its gale.


	67. The Edge of Reason

The long skirt of her coat was acting like a drag. Daina skidded backward a step, and then another, straining against the hot Mist-wind. But then Basch's arm circled her shoulders. He pulled her to his side, his cheek pressed into the top of her head. She clung to him gratefully.

"And lo!" Cid crowed. "How brightly burned their lanthorn! Casts it back the shadow of occurian design! Testament that Man's history shall be His alone!"

"You made your neithicite for this," Balthier spat, somewhere to Daina's right. "You mimic the occuria's stone for what? To become a god yourself?"

"On whose shoulders better to stand than those of the would-be gods! Such high hopes I once had, but you ran, and they with you! Alas, your return is too late." Cid was nothing but a dark shape against the blazing Sun-Cryst. "Come, Ffamran! Revel in the glory of my triumph!"

"Can you fight?" Basch asked in her ear, his voice stripped of all gentleness until it was as hard as steel.

"Yes," she answered roughly. She grabbed the phoenix pendant and pulled on the chain until he bent enough that she could kiss him, and then she stood away from him, drawing the yakei once more.

Three things, in all of this chaos, were agonizingly clear: First, Cidolfus Bunansa was her father's murderer, and the sole hume responsible for the eradication of Nabradia. Second, Balthier was no longer Ffamran, and the father he'd loved was no longer alive. Lastly, it was her sworn duty to take this madman down, for the sake of Dalmasca.

Cid produced his energy rifles and fired at his son. She heard Balthier curse, and then she attacked. Cid proved as nimble as ever. With his continuous fire, it was impossible for her to get in close enough to strike him, but he could certainly draw a bead on her, and more than once she felt the energy beams rip through skin or cloth. Basch, Vaan, and Ashe were having the same problem. Penelo strove to assist them, darting among her friends to confer status effects that enhanced their fighting abilities, doling out potions where necessary.

Where was Fran?

"Behold the manufacted nethicite," Cid said triumphantly, holding aloft an orange shard that resembled the blue sample Larsa had carried. "The fruit of our own power and knowledge! See what the stone of Man is capable of! Witness its power with your own eyes!"

He threw the stone into the air and fired at it. A magick circle bloomed beneath Cid and some of the shrieking Mist coalesced. An esper reared above the scientist, draped in chains, balancing a wide-mouthed urn on its shoulder. From within the urn, a sound like a squall issued, rivaling the storm outside.

"Belias!" Ashe cried, and she raised her fist to spike the gigas's crystal on the floor.

Cid immediately opened fire on her, and she broke off her summon to bring her aegis shield around. He couldn't stop them all from summoning their disgraced favorites of the gods, however.

Hashmal's topaz smashed first, followed by Shemhazai's ruby. Vaan flung an amethyst into the mix, freeing Mateus. The three espers formed a barrier between Cid's summoned fiend and their hume masters, and unleashed a magickal storm that made Daina's scalp tingle. Cid, standing beneath his esper, recognized his danger right away, but could not avoid the blast.

The espers disappeared, one by one, returning to their crystals, which the Mist mended and made whole, and Balthier took aim and fired. Cid's esper dropped its urn and surrendered its name to the sky pirate: Famfrit, the Darkening Cloud.

Cid watched his erstwhile ally fail. He glared at his son. Shakily, he brought his energy rifles up, and then dropped them, a grimace of pain searing across his face. He collapsed, gold afterimages rising above him like fireflies.

Balthier also abandoned his gun and ran forward, but then Venat materialized, blocking his way.

"Let him by, Venat," Cid said breathlessly. "It is done."

Expressionless, faceless, the flame-eyed occurian drifted to the side.

"Ah, how I have enjoyed these six years," Cid grunted, getting to his feet.

"The pleasure was all mine," Venat said, its dual tones managing to convey real appreciation. Balthier impatiently walked right through it, and it vanished.

Daina could see Cid now, see the golden flecks of light spinning on the air. Another one detached itself from his hand, and the Sun-Cryst shone through his glove; he was dissolving into Mist.

"Was there no other way?" Balthier asked regretfully.

"Spend your pity elsewhere," Cid said with a faint laugh, tinged with mockery. At himself or at his son, Daina couldn't tell. "If you are so set on running, hadn't you best be off? Fool of a pirate."

In a flash of light that was barely discernable over the Sun-Cryst's alarming brilliance, Cid simply ceased to be. The Cryst seemed to soak up his essence. It was beautiful, in a way, and terrible, too.

Weary to her very soul, Daina looked on, until Penelo exclaimed, "Fran?"

She turned around when Penelo raced to the viera, who was lying on the floor. Sweat glistened on Fran's mocha face.

"The Mist burns," Fran moaned. "To bursting it beats. The cocoon!"

The Cryst pulsed the wind hotter and stronger than before.

Balthier went to her, and Penelo scooted aside to make room for him. He gently put his hand on Fran's shoulder.

"The Sun-Cryst bursts," she said to him. "You must run. As far as you can."

"Easy, Fran," he said.

She reached up and cupped his cheek in her long-fingered hand. "Hadn't you best be off?" she asked weakly. "That's what a sky pirate does. You fly, don't you?"

Daina couldn't see Balthier's face, but after a moment, he took Fran's hand in his and glibly answered, "I suppose you'd better hang on then."

What felt like an earthquake started up, the Cryst's emissions rocking the Pharos to its foundations. Daina looked for him, but sometime during the battle with Cid, Gabranth had fled. Balthier and Penelo helped Fran to her feet and began leading her to the lift.

"Ashe!" Vaan yelled against the gale. "The sword! We have to stop it!"

He traded Reddas's sword for the Treaty-Blade, and Ashe grasped the Sword of Kings. They strained against the Mist, but neither could make any headway, their hair and clothes streaming straight backward. Daina wanted to help her Lady, but the wind was too strong for her, too. She thought it might strip the flesh from her bones.

That was when she saw him. Reddas. The huge man waded through the Mist-wind until he reached Ashe, and he took the nethicite destroyer from her hands.


	68. Rays of Ashen Light

Daina renewed her fight to reach her Lady. The wind blew Reddas's speech back to her.

"You must quit this place," he said. "It's reacting. I have not seen its like before! Nay, never this large. Never such threat impendent." He hoisted the Sword of Kings and finished, "For Nabudis."

In an impossible feat of strength, Reddas ran full tilt at the Cryst and performed one of his flying leaps, lifting the sword over his head. As if the Cryst understood its peril, it gathered enough Mist to halt Reddas in midair, like sap trapping a fly. Some of the vortex nearer the floor lessened, used up in the Cryst's fight against the former judge, and Daina lurched to Ashe's side. In slow motion, Reddas continued on his trajectory through sheer force of will.

"Reddas, no!" Vaan yelled.

"Come!" Basch's rough voice called urgently. His hand closed on Daina's elbow, and he grabbed the princess as well. His broad shoulders shielded the women from the wind. "Vaan! You cannot help him!"

"I, judge magister, condemn you to oblivion!" Reddas bellowed.

For the briefest of moments, the hot Mist ceased altogether, and then it erupted even more fiercely than before; Reddas had sunk the nethicite destroyer deep in the Cryst, and it had exploded. Daina, Basch, Ashe, and Vaan reached the lift at a dead run and were sent sailing onto it like a handful of leaves driven by a hurricane. They impacted the far railing and clung to it. As if it had waited only for them, the lift plummeted, carrying them down at breakneck speed, while the column of Mist and water collapsed around them. Daina felt the exact moment the skystone failed – she lost contact with the platform when it plunged at a velocity that left safety far behind. Penelo nearly killed herself cushioning their fall with a massive float spell. She wasn't able to save the lift, however, which ruined itself upon the stone floor.

They tumbled out the bottom of the Pharos amid a flock of panicked beasts, seawater crashing around their knees and masonry about their ears. Bruised and battered, the seven companions raced to the _Strahl_ and crowded into the cockpit.

Vaan hung anxiously over Balthier's seat, swaying with the motion of the _Strahl_ as the airship lifted and swung around to face the tower. Ashe laid her hand on his shoulder, offering silent support. Without a word, Daina sank next to Basch, not touching him, but taking comfort from his nearness.

By then, the Cryst's fury had spent itself into nothing. The sky was blue and cloudless once again, the sea calm on its course over the world's end. It might have been as if they'd never come.

But the tower – it was scarred, its peak resembling a volcano's shattered caldera. The annihilation of the Cryst had demolished the top floors of the Lighthouse and everything in them.

"Reddas," Vaan murmured. He ducked his head, his fair hair hiding his eyes.

Nobody said anything for a long time. The Sun-Cryst was no more, but Reddas had not escaped the Cryst's undoing. They had succeeded, but at a cost no one should ever have to pay.

* * *

Since no better ideas presented themselves, Basch and Balthier decided it would be best to return to Balfonheim Port. When neither Daina nor Ashe objected, the _Strahl_ turned her nose to the west and her glossair engines purred as she carried them away from the City of Other Days.

Daina fell asleep on the voyage, bereft of songs. She awakened as the _Strahl_ banked over Balfonheim's harbor, and her bleary eyes picked out Rikken, Elza, and Raz standing on the wharf, staring out at the eastern ocean. It was dawn.

Did Elza know that her leader had fallen? Daina turned away from the porthole, sickened by the thought that it was their quest that had ended the pirate's life.

The group separated once they reached Reddas's manse, to sleep, to seek something to eat, or to simply be alone. His servants opened his doors to them in spite of his loss. Like Ashe, they were aimless.

The battles to gain the Lighthouse peak and to claim victory over the Sun-Cryst had taken much out of Daina. She dawdled until only Basch remained, and she smiled when he invited her to him with a smoldering amber look. They wandered through the art gallery, talking of the past and the future, but never about the present. They spoke of Noah, but not of Gabranth. Landis and Nabradia, but not Dalmasca. They shared childhood memories, but avoided _right now_. There was too much uncertainty in right now, too much pain and grief. Just this once, Daina wanted to seize her life in both hands and direct its weave, rather than let Fate shuttle her thread through its loom.

There was a sort of desperation in this stolen time together. At the knight's rooms, talking turned into kissing, filled with a hunger that weakened her knees and started up a trembling deep in her belly. Her eyes closed and she leaned against him, secure in the circle of his arms.

"Will you stay?" he asked, his voice sounding deeper with her ear on his chest. It sent more shivers through her, as if she'd been burned by fire, or ice.

For an answer, she drew him down to her, and surrendered herself to him.

* * *

Later that day, someone knocked. Daina sat on the sofa, braiding her lily-blonde hair. Basch, wearing only his shorts and pendant, opened the door. The manse servant on the other side spoke, too quietly for her to hear, but Basch had a strange look on his face when he returned and knelt before her. He touched her hand, and she put her forehead to his, breathing in his warm golden scent in total contentment.

"Our presence has been requested," he said.

She raised her eyebrows and sat up. "By whom?"

"He announced himself a friend, but did not leave a name."

With this strange summons piquing her curiosity, Daina rose. "I will inform Lady Ashe. Will you see to the others?"

"Aye." He kissed her, running his fingers once through her hair, and they parted.

* * *

Daina heard Rikken on her way to her Lady's room. "Blast the sea! Blast the waves! Blast it all! I don't believe he's gone. He's _Reddas_. How could _he_ die?"

"Hadn't you noticed?" came Elza's pouting, seductive tones. "He'd been searching for a place to die all along."

"Lord Reddas weren't the sort of man to run away from his problems by dyin'!" squawked the nu mou Raz. "He weren't! How could he abandon this town?"

"You'd have him regret passing?" Elza snapped. "You'd have him suffer and wail for eternity?"

"Th-that's not what I meant." Raz paused. "No, if he's gone, then he should rest in peace. Gods know, he deserves it."

"Then let him. If you've time to mourn and curse him, then you've certainly time to carry on what he started. If you don't wish an eternity of regret on him, then let's do our part here, and know he's watching over us, satisfied."

"Satisfied?" Rikken snorted. "Reddas? We'd be lucky if we earned a 'not disappointed' from him!"

Daina turned a corner, and their voices faded, but their words remained seared in her heart.


	69. Station of Ascension

The lady knight and the princess walked arm in arm, neither speaking. There were no words adequate for what had happened to them all on the one hundredth floor in the Pharos at Ridorana. However, Ashe seemed somehow more alive than she had in the past two years, as if the burden she carried was no longer a crushing weight, but proof of her strength, proudly lifted. Thus, when she walked in to Reddas's billiard room, her head high and her gray eyes full of light, Al-Cid Margrace seemed momentarily struck by her, half his face hidden, as it had been on Mt. Bur-Omisace, by his sunglasses.

"Al-Cid?" Vaan asked, expressing everybody's surprise at seeing the Rozarrian royal in Reddas's chair, and his female servant as blank as ever at his shoulder.

"We let ourselves inside," Al-Cid said, swiftly recovering his poise. "The situation is one demanding some haste, you understand."

"How did you know where we were?" Vaan asked, as everyone else filed inside.

Al-Cid lowered his feet to the floor and stood, unsmiling. "My little birds," he said, his _r_'s rolling like the ocean waves as he gave his servant a meaningful glance, "they tell me many, many things. My Lady, the war begins now."

"Then you were unsuccessful in stopping the Rozarrian fleet?" Ashe clasped her hands, but she did not fiddle with her wedding ring.

"All went according to plan until it came time to request withdrawal of our most devoted generals." Al-Cid paced to the billiard table and picked up one of the ship models, while Balthier, Fran, Basch, and Penelo moved in closer. "In their enthusiasm for war, our great military leaders went behind my back, straight to Marquis Ondore's Resistance."

Ashe frowned. "The Resistance?"

"During training, a division of the Resistance ignored their orders and disappeared. They were next found exchanging broadsides with the Imperials over Old Nabradia," Al-Cid explained.

"Why would they go there?" Basch demanded. "They were asking to be found!"

"You misunderstand." Al-Cid tossed the model back onto the green-felted table. "Those ships most surely belonged to a Rozarrian division. They may have joined Ondore's Resistance forces as patriots, or even mercenaries, but they are regulars of the Rozarrian army under direct command of our War Pavilion. This fifth column has invaded Imperial airspace and provoked a response. His Excellency the marquis was obliged to give his main fleet the order to attack. And the battleground," Al-Cid looked at Ashe, his handsome, tanned face full of regret, "is Dalmasca."

Ashe said nothing, but her expression betrayed her dismay. Balthier then moved forward and settled himself on the billiard table.

"Rozarria will enter the fray," he said, "the defense of Dalmasca as their excuse, and we will have a war between empires."

"They will bide their time, wait until the Empire has spent itself against the marquis. But Vayne – he will crush them and the marquis both between his hands," Al-Cid said, clapping his own hands together in emphasis.

"Vayne holds the Dusk Shard no longer," Basch said. "His advantage is lost."

Al-Cid, however, brushed this aside as inconsequential with a wave of his hand. "Vayne has advantages enough. He stands on higher ground, and my birds tell me he has awoken something quite large. _Bahamut_, Lord of the Sky." He peered sideways at them over the rims of his glasses. "There was a stirring in the Mist near Ridorana. _Bahamut_ awoke soon after this."

Fran crossed her arms, her silver eyebrows contracting. "It is the Mist that came before the Cryst was undone. It breathed life into this _Bahamut_. If Reddas had not stopped it when he did, how much more Mist might it have drunk? All went according to Dr. Cid's designs." She approached Balthier, her face questioning.

"Yes, the man's last great accomplishment, I fear," her partner said darkly. "And so it falls to me to put an end to this thing."

"Vayne commands _Bahamut_ himself?" Ashe asked, stepping forward.

"He comes to Rabanastre," Al-Cid acknowledged.

"Then I will defend Dalmasca and stop this _Bahamut_. This is my charge –"

"That's _our_ charge, actually," Vaan interrupted at her side.

Ashe looked at him. A smile began. And when Penelo ran up to her other side, it blossomed. Lady Ashe was truly beautiful when she smiled.

"It's our home," Penelo said sweetly. "It belongs to us all."

Ashe looked around at everyone, her smile answered by each of them in turn.

At that, Al-Cid and his servant girl both headed for the door, seemingly of one mind. He said, "And my charge is to hinder and delay this Rozarrian invasion for as long as is possible. I will do what I can."

Then, he stopped, and turned around. "Ah, yes . . ." He strode up to Ashe, and with typical western flair, took up her hand and removed his sunglasses. His dark eyes bored into hers, and he spoke with real sincerity. "When this unpleasantness is done, you must come to Rozarria. I will take you to the Ambervale of Clan Margrace. Such things I will show you! Until then, I will be waiting."

He left, then, and was the only one who missed Ashe's flattered expression, and how her hand was slow to return to her side. Balthier saw all this and heaved a sigh, shaking his head, as if berating himself. But then, a slight movement at his side made him glance at Fran – and at her knowing, affectionate smile. The viera's wise eyes missed nothing.

Not for the first time, Daina wondered how much Fran still loved him, and she respected the older woman for letting him go. Balthier, however, looked quickly away again, as discomposed as Daina had ever seen him. It was such a proof of his feelings for the princess that she struggled with a laugh, not wanting to call Ashe's attention to him. There would be obstacles enough for two such as they, if he chose to pursue it. He was a loyal ally, and had proved his worth many times over. A true friend. For that, she wished him luck, in whatever he decided to do.

How strange that these weeks of traveling together could change her perceptions so! She glanced at Basch, to see how he took it, and he gave her a small, private smile, just for her.


	70. Demesne of the Sand Queen

They saw the approach of the Sky Fortress _Bahamut_ first – a great black funnel cloud, tearing up the sands of the desert to the north of Rabanastre. Then, the _Strahl_'s radio crackled to life. A mixture of Archadian and Bhujerban voices streamed through the speakers, their meaning lost to the cacophony of a battle engaged. And the battle hove into view, dreadnoughts and cruisers floating in the Dalmascan skies, while smaller ships zoomed between them, some exploding like firecrackers as they were hit by enemy salvos.

The Resistance had indeed grown, but Vayne was ready for them. Daina's mouth went dry at the sight of _Bahamut_, shaped like an elongated spinning top, looming in the distance.

A tiny speck of tangerine light bloomed on _Bahamut_, and then it shot toward one of the Resistance cruisers. The cruiser vanished in a familiar plasmatic inferno.

"So. The manufacted nethicite still operates," Daina said from the rear of the cockpit. Only Penelo heard her, and the younger girl bit her lip.

Balthier piloted the _Strahl_ into the outer fringes of the sky battle, heading for the monstrosity that was the sky fortress. _Bahamut_ fired again, the plasma spinning in the sky, and Rabanastre lit up in gorgeous, sparkling shimmers as it passed. Its paling seemed to have resisted the nethicite's blasts so far, but Daina doubted it could withstand a direct hit.

Ashe lunged forward and snatched up one of the microphones. Fran fiddled with the radio's controls, fine-tuning their reception, and a single Bhujerban said, "Unknown ship from abaft!"

Balthier flew right past the Resistance flagship, the _Garland_, and from her bridge, Marquis Ondore cried, "Could it be?"

Fran nodded at Ashe.

"Uncle, it is I!" she said into the microphone, bracing herself against Fran's seat. "I'm crossing to _Bahamut_ to stop Vayne!"

"What are you saying? You are too rash! Your duties come after the battle is over!" the marquis said coolly.

"If we allow them to destroy us here, there will be no after." Ashe almost lost her footing, but Basch was there, and he steadied her. "You must assist our charge."

"Stop. You must pull back!" And then, quieter, they heard him say, "Stop the _Strahl_!"

Vaan dove for the second microphone, and when he pressed the side button, a red light burned. "Hold it! I mean, w-wait! This is Larsa Solidor! I'm going in with her! So, we're fine! I got the princess covered!"

A long pause succeeded this. "Larsa Solidor? So you hold him as a hostage?"

"No, Uncle," Ashe said, not missing a beat. "He will fight with us against Vayne!"

"Leave it to us!" Vaan added in the prince's voice.

The two Dalmascans waited, clutching their mics.

"Understood," Ondore said at last. "Our fate is in your hands."

"Yes!" Vaan cried, dropping the mic.

Penelo leaned into his seat. " 'I got the princess covered'?" she repeated wryly.

"Larsa'd say that," he said defensively.

Balthier leaned toward Ashe's mic and spoke to the marquis. "We're relying on you for fire support. Give them something to think about. We'll pick our moment and make our move!"

Daina gripped the arms of her seat as the _Strahl_ zipped around and under the ships occupying Rabanastran airspace, both enemy and ally. Ashe and Basch took their seats as well.

"Quite the welcome! Careful!" Balthier yelled.

"One follows!" Fran said sharply.

"Ah, you want to dance! Then let's dance!"

Oh, how Daina hated this. She felt so useless, unable to do anything to either assist the sky pirates, or even to save herself should something untoward happen. She couldn't see much, either, except what flashed across the _Strahl_'s windscreen. A few shots struck their hull, making the entire ship and the lady knight within it shudder.

"A new partner," Fran observed.

"It's not easy being this popular, you know."

With such quips at his disposal, and a fair bit of skill, Balthier flew his ship straight past _Bahamut_'s glossair rings, and then angled up along the massive fortress, the thrust sending Daina deep into her seat. She squeezed her eyes shut.

"There it is," he announced, and, at last, the _Strahl_ slowed, leveled, and then docked.

"Come on! Come on!" Vaan cried, waving them down the gangplank.

Once inside the fortress, they were plunged into a nighttime gloom. Daina breathed a sigh of relief; _Bahamut_ was so gargantuan that she could not feel the slightest movement in the floor beneath her feet, though she knew that the fortress was still heading for the royal city. Ashe came to a halt, looking uncertainly around.

"Vayne will be in the fortress's command tower," Balthier said, fixing his cuff. "I saw something of the like on our way in here. Right above our heads."

"We need not fight all the Empire to win," the princess said. "If we can get to Vayne, we can put an end to this war."

"Let's get going then," said Vaan, scrubbing at the back of his head. "Find Vayne, wherever he's perched, and knock him off."

Daina grinned. That was just like him. All seven of them converged, united to a single purpose. They looked at each other, and then, at Ashe's signal, passed through the bulkhead portal into the fortress's interior catwalks. They moved at a quick pace, as stealthily as possible, encountering very few soldiers on fire watch; most of the crew would be at their battle stations. A grand staircase led toward the central hub, and they descended it cautiously.

Something rammed _Bahamut_ with enough force to rock the sky fortress. Ashe grabbed the railing, and Daina grabbed Basch. Vaan and Penelo hugged each other to keep from falling. It had been easy to forget the battle raging outside while cocooned in the red-lit, silent catwalks.

"The Resistance fights their battle well," Fran said, echoing Daina's thoughts. "We dare not fail them. We dare not falter."

"Stop worrying," Vaan said from several steps lower. "We just have to clean up here, and then Ashe'll be the queen."

"It's kind of hard to believe. I can't even imagine trying to rule a whole kingdom," Penelo said in her customary sweet way.

"I can't imagine our Ashe doing anything less," Daina said, grinning.

"A queen might 'run away' with the help of a sky pirate looking to raise his bounty," Basch said with a rare flash of humor.

"I doubt our queen would need the help of any sky pirates," Balthier returned, smirking.

"Do you really think me as strong as all that?" Ashe asked with a breathy little laugh, and she smiled up at Balthier.

"Who said anything about strong?" Vaan cocked his head. "You'll make it. You've got good friends."

Daina held out her fist, and Vaan bumped his into it.


	71. Field of Fallen Wings

It was a short trip from the central hub to the main lift. Vaan trotted up to the controls with Penelo at his shoulder and began poking at them.

Fran's silver-furred ear flicked, and then she whipped around. Balthier, Ashe, and Daina did also. Daina's leaf-green eyes widened.

Basch turned last, slowly, as if he already knew who owned the heavy footsteps behind him. "So, you have lived."

"I am judge magister," Gabranth said, a sword in each hand. He took a step and then faltered, swaying with the effort to remain upright. His breathing was labored. "Even in disgrace. My just reward for aiding the Empire that destroyed my homeland."

"Gabranth." Basch shook his wheat gold head. "Do not blame yourself anymore."

"You confound me, Brother!" the other shouted, as if stealing Basch's ruined voice and then mending it. "You failed Landis, you failed Dalmasca, all you were to protect. Yet you still hold on to your honor. How?"

"I had someone more important to defend," Basch said, a tilt of his head indicating the princess at his side. "And defend her I have. How is it that _you_ have survived? Is it not because you defend Lord Larsa?"

"Silence!" Gabranth roared. "All was stripped from me! Only hatred for the brother who fled our homeland remains mine. Tell me: Why do you forsake that which you must hold most precious?"

"I do as I must, Brother. Or is that not answer enough?"

This time, Daina did not hold back. She and Ashe drew their swords, and the two knights who had adopted Dalmasca and its princess advanced on the wounded judge. At first, the fight seemed straightforward – his reflexes were slow, and his blows lacked real strength. But then, two things happened at once: Gabranth used an elixir, a rare tincture indeed, which restored him to full health, and mechanized rooks flooded the central hub, slinging magick and bullets in quick succession.

"Vaan, get that lift in order," Balthier commanded. "Fran!"

"I'll take the left," the viera said, and the two sky pirates proceeded to thin the rooks with shot and arrow.

The judge put his swords together. "Futile, Basch! Long have I walked in hatred's company. As long as I can curse your name I shall not be defeated."

"Then come!" challenged the knight, proud as any lion. "Wield your hatred and crush me. I welcome it!"

Gabranth was quicker now, and stronger. He unleashed terrible spells and attacks that broke bones and made blood flow. Daina was reminded of her flight through the palace on the night of the fete, as her supply of potions dwindled until it was gone.

"Look, Basch, your friends die! As they must, for surely you cannot protect them!" Gabranth jeered, and whisked his double-bladed lance through the air. Daina cried out when he struck and disarmed her, and then kicked her to the floor. Stars popped in her vision. She lay there, dazed and in pain, while Gabranth continued to taunt his twin. "Know now the despair you have taught me!"

_Your first mistake_, Daina thought as her eyes slipped shut. _You must see that I am not nothing to him. My defeat will only make him stronger_.

Then Ashe was there, spilling potion between Daina's lips, and by the time the lady knight could stand, Gabranth seemed unable to fight any longer. Panting, the brothers faced each other. Gabranth dropped one sword, but then he stubbornly leveled the other at Basch.

"Have you your fill of this?" he asked.

"I would ask you the same," Basch replied evenly. "Let this end, Noah."

Gabranth staggered, and then crashed to his knees. Blood dripped from between the plates of his armor. "I've no right to be called by that name."

"Then live," Basch urged, "and reclaim it."

Gabranth made no response to that. Somewhere behind Daina, Vaan crowed; he had finally gotten the lift to respond, and it began to rise. Gabranth made his slow, pained way to the edge of the lift.

"Um, I think I can help you," Penelo said hesitantly, holding her arc scale aloft.

"Save your pity," he growled, and then went silent. If it weren't for the movement of his shoulders that denoted breathing, he might have been an empty suit of armor. Penelo looked uncertainly up at Basch. He shook his head: _Leave him be_.

"Daina," he started in his rough voice, but she cut him off before he could betray them both.

"I'm fine," she said. "But I think we're out of potions now."

"I have none left," Ashe agreed.

They all looked at each other as this realization sank in, but then Penelo bravely said, "Don't worry. Fran and I can keep us alive. Right, Fran?"

"Yes," the viera said soberly.

There was nothing else to do but move forward. The lift continued smoothly upward, depositing them on an upper floor. All except Gabranth, who remained slumped in a corner.

It was still dark, but Daina stepped off the lift into an almost empty room. Standing in the middle of the floor were Vayne and his young brother Larsa. Larsa's tiny face was pinched and unhappy, and he gasped when he saw them.

"I bid you welcome to my sky fortress, the _Bahamut_," Vayne said graciously, and bowed. He was without fear, from head to foot the quintessential aristocrat. "I must apologize for my delay in welcoming you aboard my ship. Permit me to ask: Who are you? An angel of vengeance? Or perchance a saint of salvation?"

Ashe, to whom this speech was directed, softly answered, "I am simply myself. No more and no less. And I want only to be free."

"Such a woman is not fit to bear the burden of rule," Vayne said in the same calm tones. He raised his fist. "Weep for Dalmasca, for she is lost. Observe well, Larsa. Watch and mark you the suffering of one who must rule, yet lacks the power."

"No."

Daina looked at the young prince. Although the top of his head hovered near his elder brother's elbow, he had drawn his sword, and was pointing it at Vayne. The tip shook, and he grasped the hilt with both hands to keep it steady.

"No, Brother. I will not," Larsa said. "Though I lack your power, I will still persist."

Vayne had not reacted, but he said, "Bold words, child."

Ashe attacked Archadia's dictator, her sword thrusting toward his neck, and he responded in kind, punching her in the side of the head. Basch joined her before Vayne could really hurt her, but Larsa seemed undecided.

"Stay back, Lord Prince," Daina said gently, standing between him and his brother. "Let us repay you for all the aid you have lent us thus far."

"Your lives are forfeit, and your Insurgence with them," Vayne snapped, hearing her. "Dalmasca will again know order. For good and all, I shall bring your futile attempts at rebellion to an end."


	72. Hall of Slumbering Might

Vayne, who fought only with his fists, could not stand against the princess and her knights. Larsa compensated for his unwillingness to harm his brother by doling out hi-potions, healing their wounds as fast as Vayne could deal them. Daina and the others did not give Vayne the chance to heal himself, and so they defeated him. His dark fall of hair swung forward, and he collapsed face first onto the floor at Ashe's feet.

"Lord Brother!" Larsa cried, and ran to him.

Vaan tried to stop him, but the child was too quick – and then, startling them all, Larsa's small body went rigid as gold lightning engulfed him mid-stride. Then, he fell.

What looked like a blanket of bloody Mist sparkled and coalesced above the small boy, transferring from Larsa to Vayne, and the elder rose – not like a man getting to his own feet, but more like a puppet raised by its strings. His hands and head hung limp, his booted toes left the floor, and then, consumed by racking spasms, his body seemed to swell. Bones cracked, joints popped apart, and Vayne screamed as the red Mist exploded outward.

It was just like the Sun-Cryst. The hot Mist blasted into Daina's face, and she braced herself against its force.

Vayne raised his head, a man transformed. His torso bulged with misshapen muscle, his previously sleek, dark hair wild and tangled. Golden fireflies of Mist danced around him, and the bloody Mist clouds billowed around Daina.

"Manufacted neithicite," Ashe said, revulsion clear in her face.

The transformation wasn't quite complete. More Mist solidified into eight autonomous greatswords that flocked to Vayne, apparently tied to his will. He raised his hands, and said, "Behold the power left me by our fallen friend."

Daina actually took a step back. Vayne's face – it was distorted, stretched by a terrible rictus of a smile. His skin sagged, decaying as she watched, and glistening bone and muscle shone beneath the blackened folds. His eyes were cold no longer. Not a vulture, but a necrofiend. Beneath his floating form, Larsa lay unmoving.

Emotionlessly, Vayne said, "Gabranth, you will defend my brother. He will have much need in the hell to follow."

So absorbed by Vayne, Daina had not seen Gabranth pull himself from the lift and approach them. He stood alone at the far end of the room. His helm briefly turned to the fallen prince, and then he unsheathed one sword. This, he pointed at Vayne.

"Yes," he said, "I _will_ defend Lord Larsa."

Vayne's molten eyes narrowed, and he bared yellowed, rotten teeth. But when he spoke, it was in tones of frostbite. "The hound strays. Treason bears a price."

"One I gladly pay," Gabranth retorted.

The judge ran at his former master, and the sephira greatswords spun like a disjointed serpent. One struck Gabranth, and ice crystals froze the joints of his left gauntlet. A second one narrowly missed him, and little tongues of purple electricity snapped in the air.

Taking the judge as an example, Daina drew both the iga blade and the yakei when a fiery sephira made straight for her. Her fighting style evolved, her two blades becoming shield and sword. It had been a long time since she'd had to fight this way, but her muscles remembered what to do, and she triumphed over the red sephira just in time for a white, holy-elemental sephira to take its place.

Daina's heart was pounding. In the darkness, she could not see how any of her friends were faring, nor could she see Vayne and Gabranth. However, she heard Vayne as if he were shouting in her ear.

"Ivalice will know a new Dynast-King, and Man will keep his own history! The tyranny of the gods is ended! We are their puppets no more! The freedom for which we have longed is at hand!"

He was powerful. More than once, she staggered as he let loose some kind of area attack that ferreted her out, but she battled through those, and kept her feet.

"Vaan! Are you okay?" Daina shouted when he streaked close by her, in hot pursuit of a sephira hemorrhaging shadows.

"Daina!" He grinned, blood dripping from his hairline and chin. "Penelo, she's over here!"

After that, they were joined by Balthier, then Fran, and finally, Basch and Ashe. Daina's lungs were on fire, and she was drenched in sweat. Still, now that she could stand in one place, she focused on the two main combatants.

Roaring, Gabranth charged a final time at Vayne, and his cyclone cut sliced deep into Vayne's mutated body, cleaving shoulder and collarbone, and then lodging in his sternum. As if untouched by this, Vayne commanded his last sephira, which shot at Gabranth. Its aim was off, however.

A large piece of Gabranth's helm was severed by the sephira, which exposed his left eye. If it weren't for the smoothness of his eyebrow, it might have been Basch behind the faceplate. Gabranth glared at Vayne and said, "Even a stray has pride!"

More of the golden fireflies appeared, and Vayne hurled Gabranth from him with a sound like a fired cannon.

As if they had never argued once in their lives, Basch ran to his brother and lifted Gabranth's head from the floor. The former judge's helm was missing, and his face was streaked with blood, his close-shorn hair dyed with it.

"Here I pay my debt," he said with a sigh.

"Burn in hell, Gabranth!" Vayne bellowed. He created five more sephiras and sent them whizzing toward the brothers.

"_Basch_!" Daina shrieked.

She started forward, but then, incredibly, the sephiras stopped as if someone had flipped a switch. Lord Larsa stood tall between Vayne and the twins, his blue sample of nethicite high in his hand. One by one, the sephiras were sucked into the stone, and then the stone shattered. The pieces glittered as they fell, and Larsa's face was defiant.

Vaan sprinted toward Vayne, picking up Gabranth's sword as he went, howling like a berserker. They collided, and the tip of the sword exited through Vayne's back. Black Mist streamed out of him, which sent Vayne soaring over a barrier, to crash down the stairs on the other side. Vaan flung the sword from him and pelted after him, leaping the barrier. Balthier, Fran, and Ashe raced after them both.


	73. Living Chasm

Larsa's hand slowly dropped, and then the boy fell to his knees, on the verge of tears. Penelo rushed up to him and put her arms around his shoulders.

Daina was not so secure. She wiped a bloodied, gloved palm over her eyes, and she moved toward the two men behind them. Basch and Gabranth were watching the children console each other.

"Basch, tell me," Gabranth murmured. "He is a good master?"

"Aye," Basch said roughly, his eyes on Larsa, and then, as if noticing a difference in the weight on his arm, he looked down at his brother.

Gabranth had fainted. Gently, Basch laid him down and stood. Daina said nothing. She had no potions, nothing to help him; Penelo's white face and too-large eyes bespoke her inability to help with magick. Fran, of course, wasn't there. Gabranth breathed still, his clean-shaven face peaceful in a way that Basch's never was, not even in sleep. And if Daina did not know her lover's visage so well, she would not have seen the one difference that birth had given them – a small mole beneath Gabranth's left eye.

She felt like an intruder, and she turned away her head. Gabranth had rights to Basch's love that she never would.

Then, Basch's hand descended on her shoulder as he walked by her, heading for the catwalk that led to Vayne. She and Penelo fell into step behind him, leaving the prince and his battered guardian behind.

* * *

The catwalk deposited them outside. And outside was chaos.

"My Lady!" Daina screamed, throwing up her arms to shield her face. The sky had gone black and red, like an enormous bullet wound bleeding Mist that was hot with evil intent. "Ashe!"

"I am here!" the princess called, her fair hair a halo around her besmirched face.

They were there, all of them – Balthier, Fran, Vaan, and Ashe, all facing off against an aberrant mockery of a hume. Vayne was encased in thousands of pounds of metal torn from _Bahamut_'s hull and cannons, twelve metallic wings keeping him afloat, only his head remaining as a reminder of what he had once been. His eyes burned with a familiar white flame.

"It's Venat," Vaan grimly shouted. "They fused, or something. Look out!"

He grabbed the princess and dove aside, while Daina leapt the other way. Vayne's spell hit them nevertheless, enveloped in plasmatic nethicite fire, and Daina dimly heard someone screaming in agony. It was only when her throat closed that she realized she was the one screaming. She choked, and it stopped.

Vayne drifted eerily around the catwalk, reminiscent of Venat's liquid movement, his arms sharpened like swords. Daina used the yakei to lever herself upright, furiously blinking back the red tinge to her vision. Time seemed to cease. She saw her friends attacking Vayne with gun, bow, sword, and dagger. She saw them hurt him, and saw him bring each one within inches of death in retaliation. Fran's curaja spells seemed to keep them alive only to let them suffer more. It was truly a hell, one from which there was no escape.

In the midst of all the battle cries, the clashing of metal on metal, the sounds of discharged magick, Daina heard a whisper.

_Free us_.

It was a voice heard in her mind, not hear ears, and the crystal in her pocket began to burn.

_We will show the would-be god what it means to fall. Free us_!

Daina clenched her fist around The Whisperer's crystal, and then she pitched it at Vayne. Shemhazai burst free with all the grace of a sleipnir, her crossbow firing point-blank into his face. The other enthralled espers joined her, their anger as tangible as a sword strike. Then, from the fleshy sky, their fallen brethren appeared, shrieking their names in defiance: Adrammelech, Cúchulainn, Chaos, Zalera, Zeromus, Exodus, Ultima, and Zodiark. Long ago, these thirteen espers had been beloved by the gods, but they had revolted against their creators, and had been cast down and bound. Venat, the occurian heretic, was not so different than they, and they would not suffer its success where they had failed so abysmally.

The battle between the espers and the Undying was colossal. The section of _Bahamut_ beneath them began to disintegrate, threatening to drop the six humes and the viera into the desert a mile below. The manufacted nethicite reacted negatively to the magicite-bearing espers, and Vayne's wails filled the whole world as his body, and Venat's, were torn asunder. Bits of metal and gristle, blood and copper tubing, bone and liquid flame, swirled and blew away. All thirteen espers vanished, taking with them the Undying's cocoon of Mist.

Blue sky smiled down on the seven comrades. It was finally over.

_They had won_.

Balthier and Fran recovered first, bumping fists as if to say, _Job well done_! Daina burst out laughing, and Ashe's elegant face was wreathed in the most brilliant smile.

And then an Imperial remora air cutter shot by overhead, flames roaring from its damaged glossair engine.

With the Undying vanquished, the sounds of the air battle between the Empire and the Resistance were unbearably loud. Her sense of reality restored, Ashe charged back into the sky fortress. They gathered Larsa and the unconscious Gabranth on the way to the _Strahl_, and piled into the smaller ship with little care for anything except stopping the war.

Daina helped Basch lay his brother in one of the bunks behind the cockpit. Little Larsa immediately crouched by the judge's head.

"Well? Can we fly?" Balthier demanded, jumping into his seat.

Fran shook her silver head. "No fuel goes to the glossair engines."

"Damn!" As quickly as he had gotten into it, Balthier got out of his seat. "Vaan, you're in charge. I'm checking the engine room. Fran, with me!"

As they rushed by Daina, a shell exploded straight in front of the ship, its concussion waves nearly knocking Fran into Balthier.

"Look!" Ashe cried, her eyes on the windshield. "_Bahamut_'s glossair rings are stopping!"

Which meant that _Bahamut_ no longer had the power to fly. If she fell, she would take the unresponsive _Strahl_ with her.

Balthier frowned, and then made a lightning decision. "Vaan! As soon as the _Strahl_'s rings move, you take off. Understood?"

Another hit to _Bahamut_ rocked the _Strahl_, and Balthier grabbed an upper bunk to stay standing. "You can fly her, Vaan. Just do it like I told you."

"Don't worry," Vaan said.

Gabranth's amber eyes opened and he took a labored breath.

"Penelo," Fran was saying, "watch for interference from _Bahamut_'s skystone. The _Strahl_'s a fickle girl. You keep her working for us."

"I'll see what I can do."

"Basch," Gabranth murmured as the sky pirates exited the cockpit. "Look after Larsa, will you? If House Solidor should crumble, the Empire would fail, and civil war would take us all."

"I understand," Basch said.

Larsa held Gabranth's limp hand tightly between his own.

Gabranth's voice dropped further. "Lord Larsa is our last hope."


	74. Starfall Field

The next half hour seemed to take days.

Gabranth was dying right before her eyes, and there was absolutely nothing Daina could do about it. His wounds were too severe for any potion to heal, and without a phoenix down, there was no hope of bringing him back.

Basch was quiet. He was not going to fight this cruel Fate that returned Noah to him just in time to steal his life away forever.

Huddled in a corner, Daina grieved for them both.

"Vaan, the power's back!" Penelo exclaimed. "We can go!"

"Right! Let's go!"

There was a rumble and a _thunk_, and then the queer sensation in her stomach that told Daina the _Strahl_ had undocked.

"Grab onto something!" Vaan called, and then he punched the accelerator. The _Strahl_ leaped away from _Bahamut._ Vaan sailed her through the raging battle until the _Garland_ reared into view.

The radio crackled with static and a Bhujerban cry of, "Sir! It's the _Strahl_! She's left _Bahamut_. She's moving away!"

"The _Strahl_!" Ondore repeated. "They made it! At last, the _Bahamut_ has fallen! The final test is upon us. The judges shall rule us no more! Main cannon on the _Alexander_!"

Basch was up and moving before Daina had time to react. He picked up the regular microphone and, with a look of deep concentration, spoke into it in a good approximation of an Archadian accent. "This is Judge Magister Gabranth. All quarters cease fire!"

Larsa's blue eyes lit up. He looked at Daina, then down at Gabranth. Tenderly, Daina accepted Gabranth's hand from the prince and took his place at the bedside. Gabranth studied her calmly, an odd, not-quite smile touching his lips. Daina's heart stuttered to a halt.

How close could these brothers be, estranged for so many years, twins or not? How much had he guessed about her? She feared she knew what that shy, resigned smile meant.

"I repeat," Basch said. "All units of the Archadian army, hold your fire! The battle is over! As of this moment, we have signed a cease-fire with Ashelia B'nargin Dalmasca, Her Royal Majesty."

Then, Basch handed the mic to Larsa.

"Attention. This is Larsa Ferrinas Solidor. My brother Vayne has died with honor in battle. The Imperial Fleet is now under my command!"

More crackling from the radio. "Sir! Your orders, sir?" asked the same Bhujerban.

"This is Ashelia Dalmasca," Ashe said sternly, taking her turn with the mic.

"The Lady Ashe!" came Ondore's voice. "Thank the gods you live!"

"I confirm what Judge Magister Gabranth and Larsa Solidor have said here. Please stand down your attack." Some of the sternness left her voice as the truth slowly sank in. Softly, she added, "The war is over. Ivalice looks to the horizon. A new day has dawned. We are free!"

Penelo gasped. "Look Vaan, the _Bahamut_!"

From her place by the bunks, Daina couldn't see what Penelo had, but she knew it couldn't be good.

"A message from the _Alexander_!" shouted a Bhujerban on the _Garland_.

"Take it," Ondore commanded.

"This is Judge Zargabaath, Captain of the _Alexander_, flagship of the 12th Dalmascan Fleet. I address all ships in Rabanastre's airspace. The _Bahamut_ must not be allowed to fall on the city of Rabanastre! We are preparing to ram her! Do not interfere!"

"Madness!" snarled the marquis, but Judge Zargabaath wasn't listening.

"Should she fall," he continued, "the paling will not hold, and all Rabanastre will be obliterated! Concentrate your fire on the _Alexander_'s remains once _Bahamut_ is clear of the city."

Suddenly, a familiar, sardonic voice butted in, voice snapping with static. "Hasty, aren't they. I think it's a little early to be throwing away our lives just yet."

"Balthier?" Vaan spluttered. "Wait, Balthier, where are you?"

"Ah, Vaan!" Balthier responded heartily, totally ignoring the question. "Sounds like you made it out okay! The _Strahl_'s a fine airship, eh?"

"What does he think he's doing?" Ondore demanded. "Balthier!"

"Marquis! Stop that fool judge on the _Alexander_ for me, would you? Just getting somewhere with these glossair rings. Almost done! Don't want him ramming me before I fix them, do we?" Balthier cut off with a cry and a cough, backed by the muffled _phut_ of an explosion.

"Balthier!" Ashe shouted, and then she remembered to press the button on the mic. "Do you understand exactly what it is you're doing?"

"Princess! No need to worry. I hope you haven't forgotten my role in this little story. I'm the leading man. You know what they say about the leading man? He never dies." Then, dropping the act, he said, "Let's fly! Fran! Power to the glossair rings."

Nothing but static answered.

"Fran?" A shorter pause. "Do I have to do everything around here?"

"Listen to me, Balthier," Ashe said desperately. "Get out of _Bahamut_ immediately! Please, Balthier! You mustn't die!" Her voice cracked, and she sagged to the floor, the mic in her lap. "Please, Balthier. Come back."

Fran's pained voice was faint, interrupted by the cacophony of continuing destruction. "I'd say you're in more of a supporting role."

"Fran, please," Balthier huffed.

Gabranth began struggling on his bed, which caught Basch's attention. The knight knelt, and Gabranth grabbed his hand with the feverish strength of the dying. "Lose Larsa, and we lose the Empire," he whispered. "Protect him. I would entrust him to no other's care."

"I will keep him from harm. I promise you," Basch said. "For the Empire, and for Dalmasca."

"Your words put me at ease, Brother. Sorry to leave you."

For Daina, it was like watching the man she loved die. Basch bowed his golden head over his brother's still form, his shoulders shaking. Daina stood by the partition that separated the cockpit from the bunks, tears streaming down her face. Behind her, Ashe was also crying. The lady knight was torn between the two people she loved the most, and she ended up comforting neither.

"Vaan, the _Strahl_'s in your hands! You'd better take care of her, you hear? If there's one scratch on her when I get back –"

Static rushed in to fill the space where Balthier's voice had been.

"Roger that," Vaan said steadily. "We'll be waiting for you."

"Balthier!" Ashe screamed.

He didn't respond. Like the setting sun, _Bahamut_ crashed to the desert sands, backed by the violent palette of the western sky. It sank in the ground like a nail through wood, and there it halted, listing to the south, a monument to the war for Dalmasca's independence, and a grave marker for two brave sky pirates.


	75. Quietened Trace

Although the first thing Dalmasca's new queen did once she returned to her home city was to send rescue units to the _Bahamut_, no trace of Balthier or Fran could be found.

There was much to be done. Ashe declared the pirates missing in action and dismissed the bounty on Balthier's head, sending the notice to all of the Clans and to the Hunter's Camp. Then, she turned her full attention to reclaiming her palace and her ministry, clearing the battlefield both in the sky and on the ground, and bringing Judge Zargabaath, Marquis Ondore, and Emperor Larsa to the treaty table.

Daina also had much to do. She slipped out of the palace during negotiations to see Vaan and Penelo home. First, they found a hangar for rent in which they could dock the _Strahl_, the gil a gift from Ashe. Second, they paid a visit to Migelo's Sundries, where the good-natured bangaa put out a feast for Daina, Vaan, Penelo, Kytes, Filo, and the rest of the street orphans in a burst of sheer ebullience.

Penelo lived in her parent's house, and it sounded like Vaan had a permanent invitation to stay there as well. Their goodbyes were tearful, at least for the girls, but Penelo was determined that their friendship would continue.

"I'll write to you!" she cried, waving.

"I look forward to it. Good luck!" Daina called back.

"Good luck to you! Watch over her for us, okay?" Vaan added.

"Count on it." Daina waved once, and then made her solitary way back to the North End.

The night was long. All of Rabanastre seemed unwilling to sleep, the freed Dalmascans celebrating in the streets and crowding the palace gates in the hopes of catching a glimpse of their new queen. But all wasn't good or peaceful; many brawls broke out between Rabanastrans and the Imperials still trapped within the city. Daina led a mixed company of Resistance members and Imperial troops, descending from the palace on chocobos to control the riots, and by dawn, no Imperial remained in the royal city except for Larsa and his cortege.

Daina was called to participate in negotiations with Zargabaath concerning border patrols and import-export taxes between Dalmasca and what remained of Old Nabradia, which belonged to the Archadian Empire. It was a lot of politics that her superiors would have dealt with in her stead, but she was the only one left, besides Ashe, who could do it. The war had claimed so many.

At the signing of the treatise, the council broke up, and Ashe and Larsa sequestered themselves to discuss how best to return Noah's body to Archades, so that he may be interred at his mother's side, at Basch's request.

Through it all, the one person uppermost in her thoughts never made an appearance.

* * *

Daina let herself out onto one of the many balconies that wreathed the upper floors of the palace. It was hot, and she was exhausted, but the sandy breeze felt nice, and she could smell flowers. She climbed onto the railing and sat on the sun-warmed stone, swinging her feet and gazing at _Bahamut_.

She had almost forgotten what it was like to live in the palace, to be so close to acknowledged royalty. What with all the handmaidens and ministers, there was no real privacy. Soon after she settled herself on the balcony rail, a lady-in-waiting escorted Basch out to her, curtseyed, and left.

He looked as tired as she felt. Daina smiled at him, and then returned her attention to the sky fortress. At a time such as this, much could be said, but she found that she didn't want to say anything after all.

Basch joined her at the railing, but he turned and leaned his back against it, looking up at the palace's towers instead.

"I have spoken with Her Majesty," he said quietly. "I will accompany Lord Larsa to Archades, to further the cause of peace in Ivalice. We depart this evening."

Somewhere, someone was playing music. It floated up to them, the notes carried by the wind, intermittent and faint.

Daina closed her eyes.

And she began to sing.

It was a Nabradian hymn, a song of mourning. She sang for those lost souls who could not have a proper funeral. For Noah fon Ronsenburg and the sky pirate Reddas, who had never been able to leave the mistakes of the past behind. For Vossler, a son of Dalmasca. For Lord Prince Rasler and for Reks, both of whom had been cut down so early in their lives. For all of the soldiers who had fallen in battle. For Fran, and for Balthier.

For her mother and her father, whom she had never allowed herself to mourn.

Daina had always loved the hymn, and she did it justice. When she finished, the only sounds that reached her were the sleepy chirping of a few birds as they returned to their nests for the heat of the day.

Basch caught up her hand, kissed it, and pressed it to his heart. "Thank you," he said fervently, his low voice rougher than usual. His eyelashes were wet.

"You will fulfill your promise to Noah," she said, her gaze straying again to _Bahamut_.

"I believe Lady Ashe no longer requires my protection. She has proven herself."

"As it should be." The skin of his chest was warm under her fingers. A tear dropped from her cheek. "Then, will you kiss me goodbye, Basch?"

Something changed in his face, and his lips parted.

"I will uphold my vows here," she said gently. "I am still a knight of Dalmasca."

The understanding in his eyes almost killed her, but this was her choice, and her decision. She would not leave Ashe alone.

Still holding her hand to his heart, Basch reached forward and cupped the back of her head, fingers combing through her hair, and kissed her. And then she slid off the railing, her hand slipping out from beneath his. She turned her back on him.

This time, she was the one to walk away.


	76. Falls of Time

"Captain Praeities!"

Arms crossed, Daina looked over her shoulder, shaking her bangs out of her face. Her white-blonde hair fell in soft layers to her elbows, loose except for the sides, which she had clipped back with a barrette of shell, carved in the shape of a dove. She held up a gloved hand, and her students ceased their exercise to stand at attention.

"A message from Montblanc of Clan Centurio," the boy reported, falling to one knee before her.

"Thank you." She accepted the parchment envelope from the boy and dismissed him. "Continue!" she commanded, her voice echoing across the training hall. Immediately, the ranks of Dalmascan boys and girls resumed their practice, going through the seven forms of swordsmanship. One day, these children would become the new Knights of Dalmasca.

When the call had gone out for recruits, exactly one year ago today, the response had been overwhelming. Old Resistance members and the nomads, remembering the foreign lady knight and the exiled princess, had sent daughters as well as sons to train under Captain Daina Praeities.

The newly promoted Captain had felt a little less assured of her abilities, but she loved her work. It brought to mind her childhood and her own training, and these children seemed to look up to her as much as she had respected her own father.

If she did shrug her shoulders, it was only where no one could see her.

Daina paced around the perimeter of the hall. Her soft brown boots buckled around her ankles, and her footfalls were silent on the marble flooring. When Ashe laid the original Order of Knights to rest, Daina chose a new uniform. She wore a brown miniskirt beneath a red vest, which left her arms and legs bare but covered her midriff. The yakei and the iga blade were belted around her hips and hung low behind her, tapping against the backs of her thighs as she walked, and the green tassel dangled from the yakei's pommel. In all, it was a less showy uniform than the pretty green coat and linen shorts, and Daina was proud to wear it.

With half an eye on her students, Daina unfolded Montblanc's letter, and the round, childish writing inside brought the well groomed moogle and his yellow pompon to mind. The message was short: Montblanc's "Belito" ploy had worked to draw the headhunter that had been preying on Clan Centurio members into the open. Ba'Gamnan and his crew were slain.

"Strange thing is," Montblanc wrote, "it wasn't one of my Clan who did the deed, kupo. Thought you'd like to know, kupo-po!"

Daina smiled, returning the letter to its envelope. She knew who had killed Ba'Gamnan, as she suspected Montblanc did, and a more fitting end to that headhunter's tyranny she couldn't imagine.

A month ago, a note had come for Ashe from Vaan, but was penned in someone else's hand: _Give this to our queen for me, would you?_ And tucked within the envelope had been Rasler's wedding ring.

Daina still remembered Ashe's satisfied smile that afternoon, as she placed Rasler's ring on a table and went to survey her city from her private balcony. It had been Balthier's way of saying goodbye, and setting Ashe free. This time, Daina hoped, Ashe could properly give her farewells both to her prince, and the sky pirate.

For tonight was Ashelia B'nargin Dalmasca's coronation.

The practice session ended, and the children dispersed to their jobs or their homes, leaving Daina to move on to her next task and duty. Nobility and delegates from all over Ivalice had been invited to Rabanastre for the ceremony, and all had sent back their répondez s'il vous plait cards with a "yes." Captain Praeities and her subordinates were in charge of security measures. Tonight, she was determined, would go without a single hitch, because Ashe would not be the only royal in attendance. Members of Clan Margrace had sent Rozarrian gifts with their cards, and the Archadian emperor, to Penelo's delight, had early promised his presence.

As Daina strode toward her Lady's apartments, her hand went to her pocket and the small, velvet-covered box nestled there. She and Basch regularly corresponded. According to his letters, he was doing well. And, according to his last, he would "continue to give chase."

Daina's feet slowed, and then stopped altogether. For the hundredth time, she opened the little box. Nestled in silk, a perfect wargod's band glinted at her.

In Nabradia, soldiers often gave their lovers wargod's bands before they went to war, which was a symbol of passionate love from afar. Her mother had worn one. The ring was dainty enough for Daina's finger, but she had not tried it on.

How Basch had learned of the custom, or come across an intact wargod's band in the Nabreus Deadlands, she did not know.

_I await your answer_.

Daina returned the box to her pocket. How could she even think of marrying Basch when she had sworn her life to Ashe?

* * *

The ceremony took place in the same ballroom where Vayne had held his fete, except this time, the ballroom and the gardens were filled only with friends. There was music, and food catered jointly by Migelo and Tomaj of the Sandsea, bouquets of flowers and cages of songbirds, dancing and laughter, and, most of all, hope for the future.

The same kiltias who had wed Ashelia and Rasler presided over the coronation. He placed Raminas's crown on her fair head, invoking the Scion of Light, Faram, and the assembly erupted in cheers, tossing flower petals on the carpet where Ashe would walk.

Dalmasca's queen was radiant in her golden dress. She danced with Lord Larsa and Al-Cid Margrace. Her loyal knight stood at attention by her throne, overseeing the party without taking part.

Larsa, who had grown several inches but not lost his precocious smile, approached her. "Well met, Captain Praeities."

"Your Imperial Majesty." Daina bowed.

"Please come with me," he said.


	77. Fields of Eternity

_Bahamut_ remained where she had fallen, but in the year since her defeat, the rains had come to the desert and filled the crater around the sky fortress. Now, a shallow lake gleamed in the moonlight, and a white bridge led from the desert sands to the fortress itself, so that tourists may visit her and pay their respects to those who had died.

Larsa and Daina walked along the gardens overlooking _Bahamut_, while the celebration continued behind them. Judge Magister Gabranth followed, his charge the young emperor. Then, smiling, Larsa moved away from her, his hands folded behind his back.

Daina steeled herself for what she would see when she turned around: A man in familiar black armor, who was just then removing the helm.

He had cut his hair. That was the first thing she noticed. It was shorn, as Noah's had been, but Basch carried the scar, and still wore a thin beard.

It was really him. Daina ducked her head, trying to control her emotions. How many nights had she dreamed of him, and had woken to a damp pillow? How many times had she reread his letters, straining to hear the timbre of his voice through the printed words?

He did not speak. He was waiting for her – he had offered her his heart and his hand, and it was up to her to answer, no matter how embarrassing she suddenly found such a prospect.

She took the velvet box from her pocket, hesitated, and then held it out to him. "Thank you, Basch, but I cannot accept this."

Slowly, his gloved hand came up, and she dropped the box into it.

"Why?"

Just the one word, and it made her shiver like a wet cat. "You know why. I have my duties here. I cannot abandon her."

Basch moved, and she looked involuntarily up, expecting that he was leaving her. Instead, his lips descended on hers. Such unbearable sweetness overcame her that she was hardly aware of the discomfort of his armor when she put her arms around his neck. Then, breaking the kiss, he knelt in front of her and removed the wargod's band from its nest of creamy silk, and then put it on her finger.

"I should have given this to you in person to begin with," he murmured. "I cannot bear to leave you again. Lady Praeities, will you marry me?"

Shaking, Daina covered her mouth. Over Basch's head, she could see Larsa and Ashe, as well as Vaan and Penelo, standing backlit by the ballroom. They had _planned_ this! All of them! Ashe was smiling in a way that Daina knew well; she was giving her permission to go. And as Daina regarded her queen, standing so calmly, so confidently, she realized that Ashe had been all right for a long time. Ashe had no need for Daina. Not any longer.

Daina, should she choose it, was _free_.

She looked down at Basch, and felt the same pull she always had, as if she were a flame drawn to his fire. She did the only thing she could.

She said, "Yes."

* * *

_**A/N:**_

I started this story without any idea of how epic it would end up being, but now that it's over, I'm more than grateful for the chance to dive so deeply into the rich world of Ivalice.

Daina's name is a sort of play on the title, "A Song for the Past." In Lithuanian, "daina" means "song," and "praeities" is the past. Each chapter title has a double meaning, as well – for all of them are the names of areas from the in-game worldmap. I used many references to the battle system, the bestiary, the items list, and even the theme song! It's been a whirl.

Now it's time for acknowledgments. Thanks go to Final Fantasy Worlds Apart for providing the game script online, and to Video Games Heaven for providing the game cinematics online.

My everlasting thanks go to my wonderful reviewers. Without all of their enthusiasm, praise, and encouragement, I would never have been able to see this project through to the end! **Sololight**, **ElTangoDeRoxanne**, **Black Claided Cat**, **RedRose-Requiem**, **DemonChick344**, **Light Saber Muffins**, **DocPepper268**, **Aviada**, **The Order of the White Knights**, **Quiddities**, **FinalFanCrazy12p3**, **Artemis1292**, **Raindancer**, **Nameless-Sinner**, **August Avant**, **SuNrIsEmAsSacRe**, and **Persephone Falling**. You beautiful people, you! I cherish the time we spent together. I bid you adieu.

4/2/2010 – 6/30/2010

_Love out,_

_Anne_


End file.
